Lost Answers
by Stechpalme
Summary: Caught again in the snares of Patron-Minette's plans, Eponine finds herself disguised as a man undergoing police training in the attempt to bring down Inspector Javert while the fervor of the revolutionaries continues to grow to a dangerous level.
1. Chapter 1

I'm** back, I suppose. In relation to my other Les Mis story, this should be quite short. No more than fourteen chapters at the most. As of now, I have the majority of it written, so you should expect frequent updates. As I wanted it to be, it's a lot darker than To Keep A Soul, but I suspect not everyone will enjoy it. Anyways, thanks for reading. If you have any ideas on how to improve this story, I welcome them in reviews and private messages. Thank you, as always.  
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The rain beat down on Eponine heavily, plastering her dark hair to her neck and soaking through her tattered clothes and worn boots chillingly, but, in her hazy mind, she minded none of it at the moment. Leaning her emaciated body against the brick wall of the building her family shared with Marius Pontmercy, she closed her cloudy eyes and wrapped her thin arms around her body, pulling the wet blanket of her ragged shawl around her shoulders as if to keep herself warm. By herself and in the gloomy darkness, if a passerby had happened to notice her at that moment, they would have seen her lips curve into a smile that almost made her pretty for a moment.

"Of course," Eponine murmured to herself, bending her leg and pressing the bottom of one of her scuffed leather boots against the expanse of the brick behind her back. "Of course I love you, Marius. I've always loved you. Ever since I first heard you speak, I knew it then, I did." She whispered to the unfeeling night, her words filled with so much passion she could have been an actress in an opera. "I knew it then. . . ." She continued, throwing her head back against the wall and tilting her chin upwards before letting out a small laugh.

She was soaking wet, chilled to the bone, and her clothing barely sufficed for propriety, even for the poor. But in that moment, unless a real physical Marius suddenly appeared out of the suffocating gloom and professed his uttermost love for her, Eponine was happier than any girl. In her mind, an imaginary boy's arms were wrapped around her body, keeping her dry from the rain and warm from the wind, and she was dressed in the clothes she would wear if her family had not descended so quickly into poverty.

To be truthful, the young woman was more than a little drunk. But then, the only times she could fool herself even remotely enough to be happy was when she drank. So that was what she did, like some carefully planned ritual each afternoon. If she could not find a way to get her hands on any misery reprieving substance within the light of the law, then she would find a way to do it without, usually by stealing or by hustling something from some other drunk. She was careful, however, to never get on anyone's bad side by doing the things she did. Eponine had long ago observed how many people did not, and that was what led to their hasty descent into darkness. Alcohol and opiates seemed to be the main motivation for whores and beggars alike, and she had vowed never to become the same way, because she had also noted the eventual way each whore and beggar died in a painfully harsh haste.

But she was different. She was careful. She would never let herself become so low that she would die for something, unless that something was Marius. But Marius was the one special exception, Eponine had decided. The young, handsome man with the dark curly hair and fresh green eyes that always smiled warmly at her no matter how poor she became was the one unique exempt from her own personal law. Her laws could only ever be broken for him, and only then that would be rare, since he had seemed to be growing distant from her as of late.

Thinking of this last thought, she sighed and her previously constructed fantasies were broken. Suddenly realizing the freezing atmosphere around her as well as her dripping clothes and skirt, she quickly turned and stepped into the building, shoving the door closed behind her and slumping against it for a moment. The interior of her home was hardly warmer than the exterior, but she slid up the stairs all the while, hoping in her heart and soul that Marius was at home and that he would be reading by a warmly lit fire and that he would perhaps not mind her presence if she was quiet enough. Her wishes were to no avail, however. Pausing in his open doorway, she immediately saw the room was dark, empty, and far from warm. He was probably off with his friends again, those boys who she could hear shouting about politics even when she was absent from the cafe where they usually met to discuss their kings and governments. Though he was probably happier and warmer where he was, Eponine could not help but feel a spike of bitter disappointment. She had not seen him much lately, and the notion made her life seem all the much harder.

Slipping into the one room apartment she shared with her family, she found, to her surprise, the entirety of her father's gang, the Patron-Minette, assembled there. When she entered the room, wringing her long hair out so that thick streams of water fell to the floor, she stared at all of the brutes there, who, in turn, stared back at her with a mocking warmth. They usually did not meet in this place, since it was small and cramped for all of the abnormally large men, and Eponine could not imagine why they had all decided to crowd into this one small room tonight. Seeing a smoky fire lit in the hearth, she calmed from her surprise and stepped over gingerly to sit beside it in an attempt to dry off. To her irritation, Montparnasse followed her suit and sat directly beside her, whispering a greeting and a snicker in her ear before wrapping his arm around her waist. Normally, she would have shoved him away, but the young criminal provided warmth which she gladly took.

"Hello, 'Ponine." Her father greeted her, smiling wryly to display two rows of broken and blackened teeth. Promiscuous as he was, she nodded back at him and leaned into the presence of the fire, feeling herself grow slightly sick from the overwhelming scent of cherry tobacco that clung to Montparnasse's entire person. "We all thought you might be interested in a new heist of ours. We need some extra help, anyhow, and we all seemed to agree you'd be perfect for the job."

"I'm listening," She said, wringing her hair out for the second time so that it hung in a limp clump over her shoulder. In her stomach, she felt a familiar pang, and it seemed to urge her ears to listen for any chance of money that may come her way.

"Well, you see now, one of us will enroll in a police academy." Thenardier began, his smile falling to be replaced by a heavily serious expression, his eyes glittering darkly in the firelight. Loudly, Montparnasse snickered, a high, faintly mad sounding noise that came off as annoying to her, though no one else seemed to bother paying him any attention. "And then we'll have one of us on the inside." The ugly man paused, clenching his jaw for a moment as his thin eyebrows bent in a scowl. "On the inside, see, we'll have that someone get close enough to the bastard Inspector."

"Why?" Eponine asked after he paused again, as if he had been waiting for her to ask just such a question. "Why Javert?"

"So we can kill him." Montparnasse said into her ear, just loud enough so the entire room could hear his soft and silken voice muttering to her sensually. "That filth of a man is, after all, our biggest problem at the moment. Especially after he picked up Brujon last week and dumped the bloody bloke in prison."

Eponine nodded in understanding, untying the scraps of leather over her feet and massaging her bruised heels and toes, the roughened skin cracked and bleeding slightly. At the sight, she gave a grieving sigh and attempted to wipe away the little trails of blood. "So who's going to be our little rat?" She asked, looking up at each man in turn, becoming more and more confused as she noted the faint and cold sparks of amusement in their eyes. All at once, the panging in her middle was replaced by one of a different breed, and dread began to make whatever heart she had left feel heavy in her chest. "No." She said, suddenly, her lips twisting in a concerned smile. "You cannot possibly be serious. How on Earth would I even-"

Grinning at her, Thenardier pulled a pair of rusted and warped scissors from the fold of his unraveling shirt, instantly silencing his head strong daughter. In an effort to calm herself, she exhaled a scoffing sort of laugh before looking away from them all, pretending that the entire scene was just some grand and frivolous joke. When their eyes sharpened at her, dim and stupid as the criminals may be, Eponine felt a cloud of anxiety begin to threaten her, making her empty stomach clench in on itself even further as she grimaced.

"Why can't Montparnasse do it?" Eponine demanded of them, her eyebrows curling into an upset and aggravated scowl. "Why can't any of you do it? Don't you think it would be trouble to have a woman impersonating a man becoming a police officer?"

"The cops know Montparnasse's face too well." One of the smarter crooks said, his throaty voice stealing the warmth the fire had created in her, as if a new sluice of icy water had been dumped over her again. The man shifted slightly, seemingly uncomfortable in the lighted atmosphere, and he moved in such a way that the light from the fire caught his face, illuminating the scars etched across his skin from various cuts and healed sores. Though she knew most of the men of her father's gang by face, voice, and name, and, although she had seen him a few short times before, this particular man did not seem to be very familiar with her. Though she could not tell what, something about him seemed to unnerve Eponine. But then again, didn't everything unnerve her? "Same with the rest of us. Bastard Inspector's got a memory to be feared." He spat, bitterly, and she took note of the rage buried shallowly behind his eyes.

"And they don't know my face?" She debated, burying her fingers in the ratty and stained fabric of her skirt before shaking a persistent Montparnasse away from her. "Me who they've thrown in the brook more times than I can remember? This is ridiculous!" To her disgust, the handsome man at her side took hold of her wrist violently and squeezed it with enough force that she could not pry his fingers away from her already bruised flesh, his lips parting in a snarl to display his pretty white teeth. "This is completely ridiculous." Eponine repeated in a distressed hiss as his grip tightened on her. "I don't know how any of you could ever think this would work!"

"It _will _work precisely because it is ridiculous, you stupid woman." Montparnasse said through gritted teeth, his tight and painful clamp over her arm increasing so that her round face contorted in a pained wince. Seeing this, he released her, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards as if he meant to smile lovingly. "The coppers might be expecting one of our men to pull a stunt like this, but they wouldn't expect a woman of all things. There's no reason to suspect a man of crimes against the law if they've never seen him before, even if he does look a bit like a scrawny bitch who doesn't know when to hold her tongue." He whispered, crossing his arms over his chest and sitting against the wall beside the fireplace as if his latest act of violence had satisfied his need for sadism for the time being. "You'll do as your father tells you, you disobedient whore, or you'll be out in the cold."

Nursing her wrist, Eponine's scowl darkened, but she said nothing further in her defense. Before her father and before Montparnasse, she had no voice. Finally, she said in a quiet voice, making the men of the room and even her mother laugh boisterously, "I'm not a whore."

"No." Thenardier said, his nicotine damaged voice still tittering in a laugh. "But if you don't do everything I tell you to do you will be soon."

Suppressing a shudder, the spark in her eyes dampened as much as her clothes and, seeing the disappearance of his daughter's pride, Thenardier beckoned her over to him, the frighteningly hideous pair of scissors waving her over in his hand. Her hands clenched into fists, Eponine stood, her matted and dampened hair hanging over her neck coldly as she walked across the room and sat at her father's feet. Her eyes downcast to the dusty floor beneath her, Eponine remembered her devotion to Marius and she said in a shaky mutter, "Can't I say goodbye to anyone before I have to do this?"

"Who do you have to say goodbye to?" Montparnasse asked, his lips twisting into another humorless grin. "The neighbor boy 'cross the hall? Haven't been playing unfaithful to me, have you 'Ponine?" The room erupted into laughter again, faithfulness being a concept completely alien to Montparnasse's own life, and she did not say anything more.

"What if I'm caught?" She murmured, her voice growing more and more miniscule as the minutes fell away and slipped from her tightened hands. "They could put me in prison for a long time. Wh-what if they want to do something worse?"

"Then don't get caught." Was all Montparnasse said, leaning back and stretching his arms lazily.

The room fell silent as soon as the faint sound of the scissors shearing away at her long brown hair was heard. Her hair was obviously too damaged and tangled for it to even gain a slight profit, so there was no care while he cut it. He simply attempted a straight line as he hacked into her thick, matted waves, gripping her head roughly in his dirtied hands and making her flinch repeatedly. The inhabitants of the room watched, all lost in their own thoughts, as Thenardier gathered the cut strands in his grimy hand until her filthy locks were gone, nothing but an uneven spur of brown hair flaring out jaggedly over her thin neck. With a lazy hand, he tossed her hair to the floor and turned his daughter by the shoulder to view her appearance now that her most feminine quality was gone.

"Put some trousers on and you could be a boy." He said at last, his face unnaturally contemplative as he did so. In silence, she nodded as he forced a frayed cap over her head messily. Grinning at her, he said in a voice cracked with delight at the prospect of his plan coming to life, "You know, I always wanted a nice son to make me some good money. Now I think I have one." For the third time, the room laughed again, the men adding their own various comments in an attempt to humor their leader.

Thenardier seemed to give one final reassurance to the men before they all left, giving a speech worthy of only the seediest criminal to encourage them in their new efforts, though Eponine did not even hear or even register his well planned out words. Instead, she stayed crouched over the floor in the center of the room, her hand absentmindedly moving against the the back of her neck as if searching for the hair that wasn't there any longer. When all else left, even Thenardier and his wife to do some side business, Montparnasse remained in the room with her. With a haughty stride from the hearth, he stood to stand in front of her weary face, placing one large hand over her shoulder as if he meant to comfort her. When Eponine looked into his eyes, however, she saw nothing but the usual rotted out remains of his soul that she had seen floating there since he had first started committing crimes worse than pickpocketing.

"I'll cut your hair so it's more fashionable, sweetheart," He said, uttering the last word mockingly before taking the seat Thenardier had occupied so that he sat behind her. Narrowing his eyes and parting his pink lips, Montparnasse wound one arm across her front, his hand absentmindedly straying against the small expanse of her breasts as he pressed his cold lips to her shoulder. Sighing heavily, she leaned back into his presence as his hand slipped beneath her blouse and felt the smooth, wet skin of her hidden flesh. Closing her eyes, Eponine offered him no resistance, only imagining that it was Marius who was touching her instead of Montparnasse, and her anxiety ebbed slightly. When he grew bored with her, from his pocket the young man withdrew a freshly sharpened and polished knife and removed the old cap from her head. Carefully, he began to cut away at the frayed remnants of her hair, his face calm as he relaxed in this art. "You had ugly hair, anyways." He said, decidedly as Eponine watched the small tufts he cut from her scalp fall to the floor around her.


	2. Chapter 2

The head of the Paris police department sat back in his chair, his hand, clutching a fine looking pen, mindlessly scratching away at an official and important looking document splayed over the hard wood surface of his desk. Pausing in his work, the aged man yawned, his sore and stiff jaw cracking, and rolled his neck to relieve it from the persistent aching there that would not seem to leave him be. Searching for a way to eliminate his time quickly, he glanced up at the large clock in the corner, noting the agonizing information that he had several hours more to go until he was legally given reprieve to leave the praised precinct and return to his own home. Seeing this, the gruff man groaned quietly to himself before moving his fine pen over the surface of his documents again, his cramped and arthritic fingers moving even more slowly than before.

Though he heard some raised voices in the hallways, the aged man did not look up to further distract himself from his tedious and boring job of filling out paperwork. Commotions such as the ones he was hearing faintly now were not uncommon to him, and the man was no longer interested by the caterwauls and shouts of the condemned criminals that so often walked the halls of his house of laws. He would leave the other men to deal with whatever whore or cutthroat was disrupting the peace of their head quarters, he was so disinterested. When the noise persisted, however, the superior officer felt his irritation grow and he noticed that there seemed to be multiple voices raised in his hallways, one of them so familiar that he suspected it to be one of his finest men in duty. With a heavy sigh, the aged policeman sat back in his chair, stretching his legs and folding his hands, his wise eyes staring at the door of his office expectantly. A moment later, two men burst through the doors of his office, one with starkly bright red hair and a tall, menacing build, his temper as easily provoked as a stallion's. The other was a small young man with a dark face and intelligent brown eyes that glittered with a stubborn pride, and, by the way Javert was grasping the young man's arm in a vice grip, the two appeared to be in some disagreement.

"Yes, Javert?" The aging man asked the larger officer, taking note of the way his pale green eyes flared with a sharp and dangerous anger that was not rare to his unique breed. Sighing heavily and abandoning his work, he rolled his neck again before refolding his aching hands and preparing himself for a long, seemingly pointless argument, such as the ones he usually suffered when his leading officer became disgruntled at anything that so much as brushed against the law. Glancing at the clock and then back at his work again, he hoped to himself that the situation with Javert and his new subordinate would take at least a good amount of time to be resolved.

"This," Javert spat, obviously more than just disgruntled, yanking on the small man's arm roughly so that his thin eyebrows arched into a scowl above his warm brown eyes. "This cannot possibly be taken seriously. This must be some imbecile's idea of a joke." He continued, shaking the young man again to ease his rage, ignoring the deepening glower that he received from his captive as he did so. "He is far too small to ever be fit for duty. He's no larger than a child." He growled, gritting his eerily sharp white teeth, his next words coming out as an odd mixture of both bark and a hiss. "I can't even _comprehend_ how he could possibly be considered as a subordinate. Especially in Paris!" He huffed, sending a burning glare at his subordinate who, with a great deal of bravery, returned the look.

"I thought the same," The superior said, observing the overly large policeman's uniform which hung over the scrawny man's body heavily, giving the impression that he was much thinner than first appeared. Noticing his observation, the young man exhaled heatedly before looking at him, his eyes silently asking him to console the heated man who was, by now, becoming nothing more than a nuisance to them both. "But Monsieur Pont-Thenard proved himself to be quite worthy of his uniform."

Javert was silent. Though his jade eyes were still narrowed in a severe glare, the spark of anger within him seemed to dampen slightly, and he let go of his newly appointed subordinate somewhat grudgingly. Giving a small, smug smile, Officer Pont-Thenard crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head upwards slightly, watching the arrogant man with amusement. "How so?" He asked, quietly, crossing his own arms over his broad chest, his breath calming in an instance at his own internal command. There was more than a hint of curiosity and intrigue in his voice, and the aged man watched with his own amusement as the young officer's lips twitched upwards in a broader, faintly conceited smirk.

"He showed evident proof as the brightest of the new recruits, overly capable of tackling and detaining men at least three times his size, and he works incredibly well with victims, something which you, Javert, happen to lack."

The head of police's words dealt a serious blow to Javert's pride, and the man's arrogant green eyes dropped to the floor, ashamed. "I apologize for acting so informally when I did not know full circumstances." He murmured, his posture straightening into an even more rigid position as he did so. His eyes still downcast in embarrassment at his own outburst, he said in a voice dripping with a clear aggravation to his subordinate, "I apologize, as well, for doubting your abilities. Our superior seems to genuinely believe that you do ascertain some potential."

At this, he sighed heavily and Eponine sensed that her new adviser's rage was over. Rocking back on her heels and still grinning, she could not believe her luck at obtaining not only a fine distinguishment from the head of police, but also secured obtaining the one man she was planning to murder as her main adviser in the beginnings of her so called _career_ as an officer of the law. She could only imagine the praise she would receive from her father and the rest of the Patron-Minette when they learned how close she would be to the most hated man in Paris in the next few months. Thinking of this, she grinned broadly, likewise crossing her arms over her chest before extending her hand to the Inspector's. Silently and with a grave expression, Javert shook it, observing the thin boy's surprisingly firm grip with mild surprise as he did so.

"I apologize again for my out of turn behavior." He repeated, dutifully, returning his attention to their superior and nodding his head in a small, polite bow. "I assure you that it will not happen again."

"You say that each time an incident occurs, Javert." The man said, picking up his pen again to resume his boring work, trying in vain to ignore the cramp beginning to rise in his thick and tanned hand. The next time he glanced up, both Javert and his subordinate had vanished through the oaken doors of his office.

Though the head of police had seemed to soothe his anger, as soon as Javert dragged his subordinate back out of the finely adorned office, he shoved the young man up against the wall again, his broad hands pressing against her arms so that it was impossible for her to move and evade him. Though she did not show it, Eponine's heart began to race erratically as a drip of terror sunk into her like a col, devastating knife. She had been so proud of herself for not having been discovered so far, it had even seemed easy, but, as his glacial green eyes slipped over her face and then her body, she felt that he had unraveled her rope of secrets so that she was nothing more than a few ragged, twisted strands, easily torn apart in his hands. Feeling his emotionless eyes bore into hers, her lids dropped heavily so that she would not have to see him, he horrified her so.

"Just because you have earned the approval of others does not mean you have the right to act like a narcissistic fool." Javert told her, darkly, his strangely canine teeth bared in a violent snarl. "You, you little rat, are up to something, and I'll have none of it. Not in my city."

"Not at all, Monsieur Inspector." She said, quickly, her voice formal and dutiful in his presence, though her heart still beat like a miniature hammer in her chest as his eyes continued to waver over her face, seeming to search for something that he was yet unable to find. "I would not dare to disobey the lawmakers of my country. I simply wish to serve the law, just like any other good citizen." She murmured, her rough voice scratchy and quiet in her best imitation of a man's.

Still scowling at her, Javert withdrew his hands from her skinny body in a flash, freeing her from his hold. "There is something not right about you." He declared as she adjusted her uniform, trying to control the alarmingly rapid rise and fall f her chest as she did so, her eyes focused on her hands instead of him.

"Perhaps there is, Monsieur, but I don't know what that thing is no more than you." She replied defensively, a surge of relief igniting her bones as she realized he had, in fact, not discovered her yet. As he turned down the hallway, waving one gloved hand in a cue for her to follow him, she smiled smugly to herself again, amazed at how easy it had been to fool some of the smartest individuals she had ever encountered into believing she was a man. It had been weeks now since her father had first cut her hair and denounced her as a woman, and no one had suspected a thing so far except Javert, and he could not even put two and two together, despite his obviously infiltrated knowledge. Still smiling, Eponine thought to herself that perhaps she wasn't as stupid as everyone made her out to be.

"This is the main precinct in Paris." Javert told her as he escorted her through the dimly lit hallways of the massive building, his arms folded behind his back mechanically, almost as if he was an automaton. "This is where criminals are initially brought before sentencing and transport to a different holding unit." She nodded in understanding as they stepped into a circular hall with stone flooring and walls, creating a ring that branched of into several other winding hallways such as the one they had just come from. "Prisoners are held in cells in the east corridor, offices of jurisdiction are in the west. The north has rooms which house mainly paperwork and artillery, but has several rooms to provide living quarters for officers in training if they are unable to find any other suitable place in the city."

Eponine nodded again, observing her adviser and copying his stance by folding her arms behind her back. Noticing that she did so, Javert felt a twitch of interest in his new subordinate that extended beyond his abnormally small body. If everything their superior officer had said was true, and if the young man was as eager to apply himself to a life aiding the law as he let on, he did have potential to be a fairly decent officer. Noting the concentrated way the young man's eyebrows bent his eyes into a concentrated stare as he looked around at each hallway, his lips moving silently as he repeated what Javert had just told him. She turned to face the south end f the circular room, noting that it was the grandly adorned entrance to the building, its wooden doors carved with a massive Fleur-de-lis and a number of old sayings she could not focus on enough to read.

"What is your name, boy?" He asked, suddenly, calculating the startled way the small man looked at him, similar to that of a man who had just been awaken from a long sleep by a jolting shake to the arm.

"Pont-Thenard," Eponine replied, quickly, suddenly immersing herself again in the fake identity she had created for the credit of others' curiosity. If she had not been in such a pressing situation, she may have smiled at her use of Marius' own name in the false one she had threaded for herself, but, by the way Javert was glaring at her, she rather felt that she should, if anything, be ill.

"And your Christian name?" He asked, quietly, his jade eyes darkening again with suspicion at his subordinate's strange reaction and hasty answer.

"My Christian name?" She asked, slowly, looking away from his highly unnerving gaze and instead staring with a pseudo sense of calm at the opening of one of the long corridors. "Uh, Louis." Eponine said, her head tipping into a small, short nod as she did so. "Named after me father, I was." She continued, resisting the urge to smile again as she realized that her words at least held some truth in them. Her father's most popular alias was Louis Jondrette, after all.

"Such a common name for such an aberrant person." Javert said, coldly. "You do have living quarters, don't you?"

" 'M afraid not." She said, absentmindedly, her already clouded thoughts drifting off as she sensed that any possible interrogation that may have arisen deteriorating as quickly as it had been jumped on her. Her arms growing sore from holding them behind her back so uniformly, Eponine let them fall other sides before shoving her small, scarred into the deep pockets of her trousers. Seeing this, Javert huffed a heaving sigh and stepped down the north wing of the building, beckoning again for her to follow his even stride.

Doing as he silently commanded, Eponine took a few wide steps so that she walked beside him instead of behind, silently observing the way his face looked in the dim light of the hallway. Though she did not know why, she found herself comparing his appearance to Marius', as she did with nearly all men. She found, however, that it was much too hard to compare them, their features were so different. Where Marius' hair was dark and curly, Javert's was red and neatly cut. Where Marius' figure was boyish and ideal for someone of his age, Javert's daunting height and broad shoulders made her feel, in comparison, uncomfortably small. The only thing similar between the two men was the color of their eyes, but where Marius' own green eyes were fresh and warm like the color of a spring leaf, Javert's were pale and sharp, a worrisome cause of nerves for many criminals she knew, including herself. Eponine silently decided, however, that she could consider Javert neither terribly handsome nor exceedingly ugly. He was simply something in between, a norm if there could be a norm on the prettiness of men. But he was nothing more than common dirt compared to Marius, and she disregarded even the slightest distinguishment he may pertain at the thought of the handsome and whimsical young man.

Though she knew his image well and his name was passed about the streets of the slums almost daily, Eponine realized that she did not know much about the man she had been assigned to murder. He was fearsome she knew, but where his fearsomeness sprang from she did not know. The few scraps of information she retained about him floated towards her mind suddenly, such as the fact that he had come to the city nearly a decade ago on the pretense of tracking down a long wanted criminal. She did not know whether or not he had been successful in his pursuit, but she assumed, since she had never seen him fail once in a hunt, he had won his game and stayed in the city merely out of convenience. Besides this information, the only other things she had heard of him was the fact that the man had neither wife nor family to call his own. Her eyes fixated first on his hand, where she noticed the absence of a marriage ring, affirming the rumor that had been the source of her knowledge, and then returned back to his face, observing again the strange fairness of his skin and the rare shade of his eyes. It was strange, she thought to herself, that it had been universally agreed before that he was an ugly man. Perhaps, Eponine mused, the blatant hatred of the man that had grown in her heart throughout the years had warped his appearance in her mind. Again, he was nothing in comparison to Marius, but, re-observing him, she decided that he, in his own way, could be considered something of himself. The pink slip of her tongue darting out of her mouth to slip across her bottom lip, she condemned the reason for his marital isolation not to be his physical features, but rather his hideous temper and evident arrogance before all men that were not the head of a respectable establishment.

Finding that her advising officer stopped at the entrance of one plain, oaken door, Eponine paused in her own step and found him observing her just as closely as she had been doing to him. Suddenly, she wondered what she looked like in the uniform she had been given, as well as if he could perceive the thin strip of fabric she had tied around herself to press her small breasts against her chest. Though she was much shorter than him, she had not felt her size very much while standing by other men, as she was unusually tall for a woman, but he made her feel no larger than an insect. Feeling his eyes wander over her head, she wondered if he thought the fashionable haircut Montparnasse had given her was decidedly too youthful to be practical for an officer, and she immediately vowed to go to a professional man as soon as she was able. Nervously, she looked down and wiped her sweating palms against the fronts of her trousers, and, with a hand like a striking snake, he grabbed hold of her chin, tilting her face upwards so that he could examine it more intensely. Knowing that it would be of no use to resist him, Eponine did not bother tearing her face away from his grasp, only making her expression as composed and manly as she could make it.

"That uniform is too large for you." Javert said, eventually, his nostrils flaring as he tilted her head backwards so that her neck strained uncomfortably. His hand heavy against her chin, he moved it from left to right, his unfeeling eyes giving her no window to his thoughts as he seemed to stare at the smooth, feminine skin of her cheeks before roughly releasing her.

"It was the smallest one available." She replied, simply, her shoulders bouncing upwards in a small shrug. After pawing at her jaw with one hand, easing it from the pain his hold on her had caused, she gave a small, mockingly polite smile. "I've always been on the smaller side of men." She added in an attempt to appease him, twitching her head slightly like a pigeon's, her eyes looking just as ignorantly stupid as she looked at him pointedly, though the entire look was a ruse.

Javert said nothing more before shoving open the door, which, Eponine found, was similar to something she might expect the militia to be housed in. The room seemed to be like a plain barracks, a number of bunks, the majority of them dusty and abandoned looking, pressed against the wall and cramped into the room. A small desk was laid out before a large window set into the wall opposite of the doorway they were standing in, flooding the room with a misty and damp light, but its companion chair was the only other hint of furniture in the room. Already, someone's things had been tossed lazily over one of the bunks and a young man scarcely older than herself was laying back on his own bed, his black eyes focused on the canvas bottom of the cot directly atop from his. On seeing them enter, he sat up, his hand quickly smoothing his jet black hair into a state of conformity, though it sprang back to its previous messiness almost immediately.

"You have the rest of the day to collect your things and settle in. If you do not return by night fall each night, you may consider yourself on probation." Javert said, coldly, watching as his subordinate stepped into the room and hoisted herself onto one of the upper bunks, crossing her legs and sitting comfortably while looking at him.

"You needn't worry none about that." Eponine said, resting her chin on her hand and making him frown at her poor quality of speech, her phrases seeming to be ones he would easily find born from the gutter. "Don't have no things to collect."

Ignoring her answer, Javert looked at the other man and, with a wave of his hand, said, "I need a private audience with you for a moment, boy."

Without so much as a hint of resistance, the boy sprang up from his cot with a great energy and padded out to the hallway, like a faithful dog called by its master. Javert pulled him into the hallway, leaving Eponine to her own devices in the room. The last he saw of her was a steady and contemptuous glare pointed directly at him as he closed the door, not even so much as a single attempt to cover it up, and he returned the look with equal fervor. As soon as the door shut with a slight snap, he turned and looked at the other boy, wishing he had been assigned this one instead of his current, inevitably troublesome subordinate. He was infinitely more respectful and more physically fit for duty than the tiny and conceited Louis Pont-Thenard.

"Listen to me closely, young man," Javert said to him in the softest murmur he was capable of, placing one powerful and trusting hand over the young man's shoulder. Pausing, he looked suspiciously at the door as if he expected Eponine to be standing there and listening to their every word, the only evidence of his internal aggravation the growing detestment in his jade eyes. "I want you to watch my subordinate and, if he does anything even remotely abnormal, I want you to report it to me immediately. Do you understand?"

"Of course, Monsieur Inspector." The young officer said, nodding politely at him. "Anything to please the most honored officer in Paris."

From within the room, Eponine listened to their conversation, careful to jump away from the door as soon as she heard the two men's breathtakingly predictable conversation end. As quickly as she could, she hoisted herself atop her bunk again and laid back just in time to see the other subordinate enter the room with a calm step. Looking up at her, he smiled obsequiously, no doubt trying to gain her fickle trust, before laying back on his own bed, resting his head of thick black hair over his navy clothed arms, his pale blue eyes glimmering in the cloudy light from the window with something she supposed was contentment. Whatever man felt pride in oppressing those who needed help most was a man who she could never allow herself to trust, Eponine thought to herself bitterly, sneering at the man in such an angle that he would not be able to see the rude expression on her face. No matter who they were, she knew, she would always be filth to them and they would always be filth to her. It was a never ending circle of hatred, lies, and loathing, one she was so accustomed to that she could not dare to ever interrupt it. But why on Earth would she want to ruin such a good thing in the first place?

"Pff," Eponine snorted to herself minutely, scoffing at the men who thought themselves so clever to be tip toeing in secret around her life, her dark eyes staring at the ceiling with a heavy glower. "What neanderthals."


	3. Chapter 3

"Why isn't the bloody bastard dead yet, Eponine? You've been running with the damn pigs for nearly six weeks now!" Thenardier hissed at his daughter, gripping her roughly by the shoulders, his anger further incited when she tore his hands from her body and slipped past him. With a swaggering stride, she stepped to the center of the room and sat in her father's torn armchair, perfectly aware that the rest of the Patron-Minette's eyes were glued to her, too amazed by her new found confidence and bravery to look away.

"Relax," She consoled him, waving her hand as if brushing his words away before slipping her cap over her round face to rest her eyes momentarily. "I'm just sticking around a bit longer than planned to get some more information on the system. For your guys' benefit, of course. I'll kill the bastard soon." She continued, propping her legs up against the small stool in front of the chair to ease herself into a more comfortable state. "The more I learn about how things like this work, the more ways to evade the law I can find for you blokes. Maybe after all this is over I'll fancy meself a lawyer." She mused, her pink lips curving upwards into an amused grin as she observed the believing expressions on their face.

Though she smiled and spoke a portion of the truth, Eponine let herself leave out the hesitation she was experiencing upon killing. In truth, she had already attempted the deed several times. When asked, her father had readily supplied her arsenic, but when she had made to pour the life stopping liquid into his routine cup of coffee one morning she could simply not keep her hands from shaking violently. She had dropped the small jar of poison on the floor, causing it to shatter, and Eponine had cleaned the mess without a second thought before bringing her superior his coffee. On another occasion, Javert had been teaching her how to shoot with a steadier hand alone in a thick cross of woods. While she had had the weapon in her hand it would have been exceedingly easy to turn it to his head and pull the trigger, but when she thought of doing so she had found his jade eyes boring into hers, grinning with approval as she pulled the trigger and hit the target she had originally been aiming for.

So, her heart faltering at the prospect of taking another human's life, she had not done it, and Eponine did not doubt that she would not be able to murder the Inspector any time soon. She merely withheld this information from her father's gang for the time being for the cause of her own safety as well as theirs. If the rash men became informed that she was becoming increasingly racked with cowardice, they would probably hurry out and jump Javert themselves, landing them all in prison as she had not once seen the Inspector's strength or skill in a fight falter, even if that fight was with a good number of men. And they would surely punish her, as well, for failing out of mere fear for her immortal soul.

But then, she thought to herself bitterly, she was probably already out of any means to save. She had practically disregarded her Lord above enough times to burn in the fiery depths of Hell for the remainder of eternity, after all. She had sinned in many different ways more times than she could count, usually with the apprehensively handsome Montparnasse who was standing in the corner watching her with a distant and possessive gaze that made her feel inexplicably concerned for herself. But, as long as the bells of Notre-Dame rang though the air each day, she would still cling to her Christian morals as much as she could. Murder was something she could definitely never commit to. At least, not in the present.

And, though she would not like to admit it, Eponine somewhat enjoyed being a police officer. A few days prior she had helped prevent a well known rapist violate another woman, and the feeling had been good, especially when Javert had clasped over the shoulder and given her a proud nod. She herself had arrested the man and personally seen him behind bars, and it was nice to see such a vile man raging at his own capture like a rabid mongrel. In addition to this, she was also much more comfortable in her living arrangements. Her bed seemed to be infinitely soft, her clothes warm, and she ate healthy amounts of food on a regular basis. Even the two other subordinates with whom she shared living quarters with were reasonable men, simple and easy to get along with. One, an older, poor man by the name of Santiago, was good natured and comedic, prone to dirty jokes which made her laugh. The other, Rouvette, the young man Javert had poached to spy on her, was kind and quiet and mostly kept to himself, though she suspected him of being quite dim.

One thing only bittered the sweet taste a life of justice offered for her, and that was being unable to see Marius. Her father, having noticed the way she clung to the young man any chance she got, had forbidden her in a deadly quiet voice to ever see the handsome and kind young student under the pretense of Louis Pont-Thenard. It would be too much of a risk, he said, and, when she had shown hesitation, he had also added in a sly whisper that it would be quite unfortunate if Monsieur Pontmercy ever found himself in some horrific accident. If Eponine had never loved him as she did now, she would have dedicated herself entirely to the life of an officer while involved in her father's heist, but, as her heart still swelled at the thought of his soft voice, living in the Parisian precinct was just as drab, boring, and miserable as life in her parent's home had been. And, in truth, it might even be much worse, sinc she was unable to see Marius this way and since she was under the constant suspicion and contemptuousness of Inspector Javert.

She may have fooled herself and the people around her into some state of comfort, but she was just as sad and sorrowful as before. Her depression was simply something she could not bring herself to shake, especially not when she was to remain as far away from Marius as possible. She would simply not allow anyone but her to see her misery for the time being, especially not now when she had the chance to act better than the rest of them while she wore finer clothes and ate regularly.

Their fiery tempers and thick heads soothed by her confident words and promises for the time being, the Patron-Minette soon departed and, like before, Montparnasse was left to be the only man in the room, though Azelma stayed to see her sister, as well.

"Come here, 'Zelm." Eponine said, beckoning her sister over to her with a gesture that resembled something of Javert's. The younger sister did as she said, and, with a fancy and practiced flourish, Eponine withdrew from the breast pocket of the shirt she wore when off duty a small sum of money which she grandiosely pressed into Azelma's small, grimy hand. Amazed, the young girl's eyes widened with astonishment, the bills in her hand possibly more than she had ever held before multiplied by a fine number. Lovingly, Eponine tucked a long strand of yellow hair behind her sister's ear, feeling warm at the look of utter surprise in the innocent girl's pretty blue eyes. "I want you to buy a new dress and some pretty boots befitting of a lady such as yerself. You deserve it."

" 'Ponine," She began, her innocent lips parted with gratitude. "How did you get so much money?"

"That's just my week's pay, if you can believe it. I would have done this a long time ago if I'd known exactly how fine I'd be living" Eponine said, giving her a soft grin and sweeping her growing hair out of her warm brown eyes. "The nice cooks at the precinct provide food enough for me, and I don't need anymore clothes than the ones I already got, so I consider it yours."

Azelma was in the middle of an ecstatic thank you, clinging onto her sister in a tight hug, when Montparnasse interrupted them, saying in a suave and smooth voice as he eyed them both, " 'Zelma, can you leave 'Ponine and I alone for a while? We've got some catching up to do, see." Azelma nodded at him and stood from her sister's side before walking with a dizzy step out of the room, watching the floor instead of looking the darkly dangerous man in the eye. Before she could step out of the room, however, Montparnasse caught her bony arm in his large hand and murmured in her ear, "Keep watch at the door, won't you? And make sure no one comes in." The young girl nodded at him, and did as he said, closing the door behind her so that she could rest her bony back against it as she sat.

Her eyes closed, Eponine listened intently as she heard the worn soles of Montparnasse's fashionable boots step over to her until he stood by her side, his signature sweet smell of cherry tobacco suddenly invading her world as he did so.

"You know," He whispered in her ear, his moist and warm breath sending a chill down through her body. "There's something incredibly. . . desirable about your situation." Her eyes still closed, Eponine felt his position shift so that his voice came from directly in front of her instead of beside. "A woman masquerading as a man, forbidden to touch another lest she be discovered. You must be so. . . ." Suddenly, she felt his hands trace the line of her cracked leather belt, prodding her flesh through the coarse fabric of her threadbare trousers so that her toes curled in her boots. "So. . . frustrated. . . ." Feeling his talented lips fall to her neck, she allowed herself to gasp slightly, her hand pressing his head of wiry dark hair further into her shoulder. Though she wanted to make more noise as he began to pull her belt away from her, Eponine knew Azelma was just outside the door and refrained from doing so for her sake. Unbuttoning the front of her trousers, Montparnasse plunged his cold hands into her sensitive folds, making her emit another gasp, and he smiled with delight as he noted the moistness of her body at his touch. "I guess I was right." He lilted in her ear as she gasped again, still refusing to open her eyes, though this was not uncommon to him. Whenever he pleasured Eponine she always closed her eyes, though he could not guess that she did it to imagine it was Marius touching her instead of him.

And, in that moment, for Eponine, it _was_ Marius who was touching her. It was Marius' soft dark curls she gripped in her hands, Marius' sweet lips tasting her clean flesh, Marius' soft, warm hands slipping over her clit gently instead of the harsh way Montparnasse was jabbing and pinching at her. In her mind, Marius was whispering loving words into her ear, vows and promises and declarations of adoration. In her dreamy thoughts, they were married and had been so for quite some time. The moment he had first met her he had fallen in love with her just as quickly as she had fallen in love with him, and he had demanded, with a woeful personality, that she marry him lest he die from misery. Together they lived in a quaint bourgeois home where she had long beautiful hair and wore pretty dresses and would cook for him and she his friends when they entertained. And, afterwards, when his young men left, he would rise slowly from his chair, giving her a gracious smile that she knew meant more, and he would pull the skirts of her dress up gently and make love to her right their in their finely decorated parlor.

" 'Parnasse," She hissed in a degrading whisper as the handsome criminal removed his hands from her teasingly, withholding his touch because he knew it would aggravate her. Proud as she was, Eponine was well familiar with the usual routine Montparnasse offered her, and today was no exception. She would always have to admit, in some way or another, that she was the one beneath him in terms of greatness before he would ever do the griping task of pleasuring her. And, as arrogant as she was, she always found herself to break for him as soon as she felt the absence of his, or rather Marius', touch from her body.

"Hmm? What's the matter, sweetheart?" He said in a seductive mutter, his other hand pushing her growing hair off of her forehead for a fleeting moment so that he could see her eyes crack open slightly to look at him, cloudy and distant as her cheeks grew red with heat. "What would you have me do this fine evening, Officer?" He said, mockingly, making a spark of torment begin to catch and blaze in her waifish body like the burning coals of a fire.

"Uh," She grunted, balling her fists into his hair so that she pulled onto the rough strands, making his own arousal grow as pain coursed through him like an aphrodisiac. "Please. . . ." She groaned, minutely, her voice low as she had made it the past few weeks to avoid suspicion from the other officers around. The sound of her deepening voice only served to delight Montparnasse further, and he licked his lips before straying his hands at her slick opening again, brushing her sensitive flesh with his fingertips before depriving himself from her just as they were about to come into contact. He repeated the movement again and again until her thin eyebrows were bent into an almost pained upwards curve, making him smile broadly at how weak she became under his immense power.

"Please what?" He delayed, grinning evilly as her hands clenched into his hair even further, pulling his face closer into her neck as she felt his sweet breath over her skin.

"Good God, man, just fuck me already." Eponine growled into his ear, her vision of Marius making love to her slowly faltering as more and more of Montparnasse's personality slowly wound its way into her fantasy like smoky and suffocating tendrils through the air.

Without another word Montparnasse picked her up from the chair like a rag doll, her body weak and limp after his touch, and shoved her roughly against the thin wall. Within moments she felt his stiff member press into her leg through his own trousers like an ever hardening tool of pleasure, evidence of the own power she held ovr him. With the speedy hands of a tramp, she hastily unbuttoned the front of his pants and grasped the shaft of his sex in her hands, inciting a delicious moan from him as she ran her fingers up his length, her own womanhood beginning to throb and pulse with an unsteady beat as she felt him grow more and more aroused at her touch.

"Keep your voice down, won't you?" She hissed at him after he let out another, louder moan, squeezing his hardening flesh into her hand so that he gave a small exclamation of pain and pleasure. In his ecstasy, he offered her no refusal and raised his hands to her front to begin unbuttoning her waistcoat and shirt, his fingers working as quickly as possible to do so. When both articles of clothing were at last open, Montparnasse pulled them from her shoulders and, with a sharp yank, tore away the long strip of fabric that bound her breasts so that her front was exposed to him, her white breasts round and firm in the dim light of the room. One broad hand splayed itself over her chest eagerly and she felt his mouth upon him again, this time over her collarbone, licking and nipping at her with a dangerous intensity as his hands examined her body again.

"Eating well has made some nice changes in you." He whispered faintly, observing the definite increase of her breast size, a hint of a hoarse laugh in his voice as his tongue swept over her clean skin again.

"Not when I am trying to-" She was cut off by her own sharp exhale as he pinched the skin of her firm endowments painfully. "Not when I am trying to pass off as a man." She grunted out, her eyes still squeezed shut as he repeated the action.

Montparnasse paused from their sinful activity momentarily to remove his own shirt and waistcoat and, without another word, he plunged his swollen member into her damp womanhood, a small noise escaping from his throat as he registered the tight, wet feeling of her hot flesh around his. His entire core aching, the young, handsome dandy could scarcely control himself as he began to force himself into her, disregarding gentleness at the cost of his own pleasure. He pressed into her farther than he usually made himself explore her body, but Eponine did not mind, her body suddenly set ablaze as she had to widen her stance to allow his thick appendage further into her, her arms still wrapped around his body in an attempt to bring the pleasure giving machine more closer to her.

As he pounded into her, Eponine realized that Montparnasse had been right in the declaration that she was sexually frustrated. Though she had not thought of carnal things much in her time living at the precinct, the frantic ache of desire she felt in her body was more than it had ever been in her life, as she had only been a young girl when she had first started sleeping with her childhood friend on a regular basis. Ever since the time he had swept her virginity from her one autumn evening when they were fourteen, he had taken her often enough so that she never felt the strains of lust pull at her morals again. And, though she sometimes expected him to be mistaken, she harbored no affection for him. Eponine merely sought Montparnasse out when she knew she needed him, and he never offered an argument.

It was only hard to restrain herself from calling out Marius' name.

As Montparnasse continued to pummel and force himself into her, she began to mirror his movement, her hips matching the brute of his movement, increasing their pleasure so that he began to whimper like a small dog. Deprived as she was from just such a pleasure, Eponine's waves of ecstasy manifested themselves and crashed over her in a quick pace, and her fingers dug themselves into the skin of his bare shoulders, no doubt creating deep purple whispers over his pale and lithe body that would remain for some time in a testimony of their harsh session of roughly taught lust. Another moan escaped his pretty lips, one that displayed even more of his aching desire, and she sensed that neither of them would be able to hold themselves for much longer. She shifted slightly, decreasing the width of her stance so that she clamped down over him, and it seemed to be the trick to finish them both. No longer able to control herself, one huge weight of pleasure fell over her, carving itself into her thin body like a hot knife, and Montparnasse felt the sheath of her body contract around his as she came with an unimaginable intensity, her slit spasming greatly in a climax of which she did not deny was the best she had ever felt. Her own orgasm raising his level of ecstasy, just moments after she had finished herself, Montparnasse gave one final grunt as his seed spilled into her, her head spinning so quickly that she could barely acknowledge the warm and dense liquid he had emptied into her.

With exhaustion, the two young beings both slumped to the floor after he removed himself from her, his arms wrapped around her body in an uncomfortably tight embrace. Feeling cold in the winter air and slightly awkward in the silence that settled over them, Eponine re-buttoned her trousers and brought the fabric of her shirt over her chest, though her head was still spinning too quickly to rebutton that particular garment, which seemed, with its imposing number of fastenings, too daunting to even attempt at the moment. Montparnasse, immodest and not bothering to redress, pressed her reddened face into the white expanse of his handsome chest, his fingers twisting themselves in her shortened dark hair as he closed his eyes and began to doze. Without much thought, she felt his lips kiss her neck deeply once, a small, content sound trickling from his throat to her skin as he did so. Even if he had repeated the actions, she probably would not have noticed much. Eponine was just about to follow the suit of his nap, nestled into the crook of his sweet smelling neck and drumming her fingers lazily over his chest, when she heard a disturbingly familiar voice ring through the thin wall like a wondrous bell.

"Azelma, do you know when Eponine will be back from the country?" Marius asked the younger Thenardier sister, making Eponine's eyes go wide with shock.

" 'M afraid I don't, Miseour Marius." The young girl told him, politely, standing and pressing her back protectively against the door of the room Montparnasse had told her to guard.

"That's too bad. I'd really like to speak with her." The student replied, making Eponine's heart flutter within the room. With a sudden surge of energy, she stood, trying to wrap her strip of fabric around her chest as quickly as possible and failing miserably. She looked down at Montparnasse to find him grinning at her mischievously, and she gave him a small kick in her anger, making his sly mood turn sour in an instance. Finally winding the rough material around her breasts in what she thought was a suitable hold, her hands fumbled as she began to button her shirt, and Montparnasse stared at the door with a clear look of anger upon his face, though what he was angry about she did not know.

"Well, you know, Miseour," Azelma began timidly as Eponine pulled on her waistcoat and frayed cravat, tying the small velvet strip around her throat with an impossibly quick hand, her heart still pounding terribly. "I do have the address of a man who can forward any letters you might send to her. He would be sure to do so, I'm positive, I am." Closing her eyes again as she pulled on her coat, Eponine silently thanked her sister as Azelma gave Marius the address of the current residence of Louis Pont-Thenard.

Without so much as a final glance towards the man she had just lain with rabidly, she ripped open the door to find Marius standing directly in front of her, speaking with Azelma. She had missed him greatly in the past six weeks, and the emotions of her heart were so uncontrollable that she felt her eyes well with tears at the sight of his lovely, boyish face and kind green eyes. He was more handsome than the last time she had seen him, though he seemed to have become even more poor in the few weeks of their terrible separation. He stared at her, his wide, sparkling eyes greatly disconcerted, and she realized that he did not even have so much as an inkling as to who she was. Fearing that she appeared strange to him, Eponine tore her eyes away from his beautiful face and shoved past them and down the hallway, her heart still racing greatly in her chest.

She had caught a glimpse of him for the first time in six weeks, and it had been utterly amazing. But, for some reason, the tears that fell down her cheeks a she stepped into the cold world were not out of happiness, but sorrow for his having not recognized her, even in her great disguise.

Curiously, Marius peered into his neighbors' room and found Montparnasse standing there, his broad and handsome chest still bared so that both Azelma and the handsome young student caught a glimpse of his lean muscular flesh, the man's dark eyes glaring at the both through his muss of damp, disarrayed curls. As the other man continued to glower at him, pulling his belt through the loops of his trousers with a sharp snap and retrieving his shirt from the floor to pull it over his bare arms, Marius could not have been more confused as to what had just happened.


	4. Chapter 4

**Updating now because I won't have time to this weekend. Enjoy.**

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"Where are we going?" Eponine asked the Inspector, taking a few large steps to keep up with his broad stride, the soles of her large black boots slapping against the click pavement. It was raining heavily and, though they were dressed in uniform, their routine shift had ended some time ago. Further adding to her aggravation, they had been on foot patrol all morning and her feet were sore from a combination of running and walking in the ill fitting boots. As the pouring weather soaked through her cap and into her shortened dark hair, Eponine frowned and wished in vain that he would let her return to the precinct already so that she could take a change of clothes and get something warm to eat. By the dutiful way he was walking, however, she concluded that this would probably not be likely.

"You never told me what urged you to become a police officer, boy." Javert said, avoiding her question simply, his sharp jade eyes focused on the stretch of street in front of them, his broad arms folded behind the back of his blue uniform. "It's certainly not something one would expect from a man of your size." He continued, making her scowl with avid irritation as he brought up the prospect of her size once again. It seemed to Eponine that her faults, her size being the greatest of all, were some of the only things he ever spoke of. She was weary of all the backwards, slight insults she received from him regarding her size and manner of speech and anything else he found at odds. The one hint of amusement she received from him was in the irony of her usual addressee 'boy'. Any of the other subordinates would probably be mollified or at least disgruntled to be called such, but Eponine only saw it as testimony of her own great abilities to deceive.

"I, uh," She began, racking her mind quickly for an answer, her face growing pale when she could not find a suitable answer that she knew would satiate him. Feelings his eyes dart over her suspiciously, she felt her throat dry and her tongue go numb. "I've lived a hard life." She said suddenly, her voice firm as if she had just made a proud decision. "Seen a lot of bad things. Just wanted to help make the world a better place, and this was the only way I could do it, though I'm not complaining much, Monsieur." Eponine finished with a slight frown, mirroring his movement again to press her own arms against her back.

"Perfectly logical reason." Was all he said further on the topic, but his question had got her mind whirling with curiosity as it often did around him, and she declared to herself that she would be brave enough to ask him a question concerning his past life. After all, wasn't her job to collect enough information on him to eventually find his weakness and kill him? There could be no better place to start then by being blunt and merely asking him questions about himself, Eponine thought to herself vaguely.

"What made _you_ want to become a police officer, Monsieur?" She asked him after a long moment of silence, a faint coldness creeping into her voice as her own eyes traveled over the muddy street, observing various beggars and bourgeois all about their own businesses.

"Mostly the same reason as you." Javert said, quietly, hinting in a harsh tone that he did not want to speak of himself, though she would not heed his warning.

"Only mostly, Monsieur?" Eponine asked, the usually warm timbre of her voice matching his chilling one, taking another broad step to avoid a particularly large puddle, grunting deeply as she did so. Though she did not see it, Javert watched her strange, nearly childlike movements through the corner of his eye, merely observing the way she acted with mild interest. He did not know many men who acted so whimsically, and he had not yet any men besides this one who acted with such frivolity before him. It was strange for a change to have someone act so comfortably around him, most people usually snapping into rigid order when confronted by his steely looks. Even if his subordinate did act with an increasingly intolerable depression, the young man's behavior was still something strange to him.

"You could say," Javert began to his subordinate, perhaps intrigued enough by the vastly abnormal behavior of the young man to act out of his own inflexible social order. "That I've always had a fascination with the law. I have believed since an early age that it is my sole duty in life to guard and enforce that law in order to prevent a repeat of that monstrous era I was born into."

"Well I'd bet so, Monsieur." Eponine began, quietly, her mind suddenly working deeply again as she probed into the shadowy details of is life. "You were born right smack into the revolution weren't you?" Stiffly, he nodded, and she continued with a carefree though distant rant, walking beside him in a tired but youthful step, like a student weary after a day of studies and exams. "Definitely a little chaotic, but I don't think I'd call it monstrous meself."

"No?" Javert replied, a hint of anger which she did not notice in his voice. "Very many people died beneath the blade of the guillotine under Marat and Robespierre's command, you know." He said roughly, and her head bobbed up and down in a pensive nod of understanding. "Men, women, children, all sentenced to death under ruthless commanders. It did not matter who they were so long as they were _enemies_ of the republic." He said the word enemies in such a way that Eponine's head perked up with interest, noting silently his somewhat aberrant response to their conversation. "I am actually quite glad you brought up the revolution, however." He said, his voice and demeanor suddenly calm again, making her wonder at the complexity of his thought and emotion process.

"Why, Monsieur Inspector?" Eponine asked him after a slight pause, as if he was waiting for just such a question.

"A group of young men around your age have been organizing some political turmoil as of late." Javert said, his face darkening as he formed the sentence. Watching him, Eponine felt her own face pale suddenly at the mention of the Les Amis and her beloved, and the news that the government had, in fact, known of their plan for some time. "They believe themselves to be organizing some sort of rebellion. Petty fools as they are, they probably will produce a large problem for the city in the coming months." He continued, his lips curving downwards in distaste, his words falling over her numbly as she re-immersed herself into all of the shouting conversations between Marius and his friends that she had often listened to, somewhat boredly.

"And how would we be involved in that problem?" She said, the volume of her voice still repressed, and Javert glanced over at his subordinate to see that the young man had stopped in his tracks. His brown eyes glistened with seriousness beneath his thin eyebrows, and Javert was glad to see him acting so maturely. He could not help but memorize the way the young man looked in the rain, his eyes dark and bent, his freshly cut hair wet and cast into small, short waves from the rain beneath his cap. He looked positively like a young man in training, great potential defining his every feature, and he could not approve and, somewhere in the back of his mind, admire the hardened expression over his subordinate's face as he spoke again.

"It would be our foremost duty to snuff out the problem before it ignites into a bigger one." He answered, gravely, his clean shaven chin tilting upwards slightly as he spoke. "Come along, now. We're nearly there."

The two officers continued the rest of their journey in silence, the only sounds passed between them the steady noise of their boots against the cobbled streets. Eventually, Javert stopped, and, her dimming eyes focused on the ground beneath her feet, nearly ran into him from behind. His eyes narrowing in annoyance at her clumsiness, he turned his subordinate roughly by the shoulder so that Eponine faced the small formation of a lonely brick building standing by itself, the only one of its kind. Observing the lack of windows and single door, she crossed her arms before looking up at her adviser, one eyebrow arching upwards in curiosity as to why he had brought her here.

"This is my home." Javert explained, copying her and crossing his arms over his chest, looking at the plain building thoughtfully. "Should you ever need to find me when I am off duty, this would be the first place to check."

Still observing the small brick flat, he almost did not notice Eponine cross the street from where they stood to step quaintly before the door, her hands placed over her hips, seeming to peer at the thick wooden material before her. Javert watched, his eyes bent in a cross between irritation, confusion, and amusement, as his subordinate swept her fingers over the door before placing her hands over her hips again, much like the broad, toughened women who worked in the market gutting fish and doing other menial tasks. Wondering what she was doing, he crossed the street as well, stepping up to the lifted step of his doorway so that he stood beside her. With a neutral expression, she spared him a bored glance before wrapping her hand around the iron door knob, inviting herself into his home without so much as a thought to his reaction.

"You don't lock your door?" Eponine asked him, stepping into the dark, one level flat and looking around with a lack of interest.

"I don't feel the need to." He replied quickly, gripping her by the arm so that she could not venture any further into his home without his permission. " I have an open invitation for any criminal in Paris to come any time they please. If someone is stupid enough to wander in _my _home it would be no trouble at all to entertain them in a prison cell." Javert said darkly, his thick eyebrows falling into a familiar scowl that made a small crease form in the pale skin between them. "What in the name of the Lord are you even doing?"

"Looking." Eponine told him, slipping out of his harsh grasp to wander further into his dwelling, mapping and memorizing it in her mind for the Patron-Minette. As she would have expected the home of Inspector Javert, who she knew cared for nothing at all but the law, there was not much to look at. The room she had entered when first stepping into the small flat was, she took, to be the parlor. There was a fireplace that looked like it had not been lit in years and, pulled to its hearth, an armchair that looked equally as neglected. At least, she mused to herself, the room was clean. There did not seem to be a single speck of dust to be found, and the wooden floor glinted with the shine of a regular mopping.

Noting the flat's emptiness, she said, quietly, taking the arm chair beside the hearth with a soft, tired groan, "You never married then? No wife no children?" He shook his head and she rested the back of her own head against her arms, crossing her legs at the ankles. "You never get lonely?" She asked him in a small voice, her eyes focusing on the undecorated mantel above the empty fireplace as if trying to imagine what it would look like with various portraits of a woman and a few young brats who he might have called his family.

"I don't much like the company of other people." Javert replied, his voice equally as quiet as his subordinate's as he examined her.

"Yes," Eponine murmured, moving her hands so that they were clasped together and held over the knees of her uniform. "The thing I hate most about people," She began in a far away mutter. "Is that I can't ever tell what they're thinking."

She stopped speaking for a long while, still staring at the brick mantel, and Javert watched her perhaps more closely than even he expected. His eyes were narrowed with a mixture of concentration and interest instead of his usual suspicion and irritation. His lips parting slightly, his gaze sunk into his subordinate deeply, feeling a sudden melt of his dislike for the man commence. It was strange how peacefully the day had been passed between them, since the young man seemed to always jump on an opportunity to aggravate him, but Pont-Thenard had seemed to cease his games for the time being. Something was troubling him, Javert knew, but for that trouble he was grateful. He could hardly stand being in the presence of his subordinate for too long, but now that he had been hardened by some seriousness, he was much more tolerable. Remembering many of the events of the past week, such as Louis Pont-Thenard's own personal arrest of Jehan Loire, the rapist he had been trying to track down for months, and the instantaneous way the young man had quickly adapted to the rough life of an officer, he felt quite a bit of pride in the way he had molded the young man into an amiable servant of the law. Complaints were so scarce from him that, whenever he did open his mouth to speak of his job, it was almost always in reverence. Despite being initially infuriated at being assigned as the adviser to Louis Pont-Thenard, Javert was now quite pleased with the arrangement, only hoping that this new mature and quiet subordinate would make a permanent stay, replacing the old, ever troublesome young man he had had to tolerate the past few weeks.

After sitting for some time, tapping her fingers quietly on her leg, Eponine noticed in the corner of her vision a narrow hallway to her right. Standing from her seat slowly, she slipped into it with a silent step, and Javert followed closely behind her.

"Would you mind a man's privacy?" He barked at her as she reached the end of the darkened hallway and opened the single door she found there without so much as a glance at her adviser. Within moments, Javert thought to himself roughly, the young man he had just approved of had been dissolved, replaced again by that intolerable young youth he detested so. "Your curiosity is as rampant as an insufferable woman's!" He said, sharply, as she stuck her head into the surprisingly well lit room.

Looking through the open doorway, Eponine saw immediately that it was his bed chamber. She did not even know why she was so shocked at the information, as the only other room in the house was the one she had just been in, but stuttered silently all the same at the fact that she had seen into the sleeping quarters of such a private man. It was not as if she hadn't been in a man's bedroom before, she had been in Montparnasse's sweetly scented lair dozens if not hundreds of times, but the sight of the darkly covered bed, the wash table beside it, and the writing desk and chair below the single window that was not visible from the street made a deep sense of discomfort course through her. She felt awkward and nervous suddenly, and then he had related her to a woman. She had not heard the rest of his comment, as she rarely listened to his entire sentences, but the last word had alarmed her enough to slam the door shut again. Incensed as he was by her lack of regards to his privacy, Javert was slightly surprised by his subordinate's strange reaction to his bed chamber, and his calculating eyes poured over her astonished expression.

"We should go back to the precinct now." Eponine told him, quietly, her eyes blank as she walked back down the hall, her spine snapped into a rigidly straight ray until she reached the doorway again. till watching her, he noticed that her hands repeatedly clenched and unclenched, as if he was trying to rid himself from some severe joint pain. "My clothes are wet and we have paper work to do." She further said, her low and roughened voice still stubbornly quiet as she pulled open the door.

Javert nodded, intrigued and apprehensive at the repeated sudden change of behavior his home had inspired in his subordinate. Even as they walked the space back to the station, the small man made no temper straining comments, said nothing humorous, and did nothing further to disrupt their routine. Instead, Eponine was unusually quiet, her eyes were distant, clouded with a hurried thought, and her arms were folded behind her thin back as mechanically as his. Though it was a relief to his being to find her behaving this way, it was also slightly unnerving to see the usually loud and good natured young man so profoundly quiet and acting so, for lack of a better word, _odd_. Even when they returned to the station and she shuffled into his office, quickly lighting a fire to warm and dry herself beside it, she remained silent and her hand trailed to he shoulder to rub herself there, as if sore. Javert watched warily as his subordinate retrieved a stack of blank parchment, a pen, and a bottle of ink from his desk and sat before the fire, absentmindedly removing his cap to ruffle his dark waves in his small hand as he began scratching away at the parchment.

"You should change your clothes so you don't fall ill." He said, sitting behind his desk though he refrained from doing any work. "There is nothing more irksome than dealing with a sick subordinate, and I'd rather prefer not to do so." Without a word, Eponine nodded and stood, slapping her hand over her eyes for a moment until the wave of dizziness and nausea that overcame her suddenly vanished. "Louis," Javert said, quietly, just as his subordinate was about to slide back into the hallway. "You should be proud for deciding to aid the law instead of working against it. Many men your age do not make the same decision."

He watched for a moment as his subordinate stared at him, his round face pale, his eyes wide and dark. And then he spoke, his lips moving in such strange words Javert could have never expected them. "I will draw this to your attention, Monsieur Inspector," Eponine said, her voice stiff, emotionless, and lacking both respect and disrespect as she continued. "I do not care for your company, and I know very well that you do not much care for mine. I do not invite any such praises as the ones you have shown me, either, and I will not return the favor if that was what you were seeking." Looking at her, somewhat astonished by her openly distasteful words, he said nothing, only letting her continue. "I mean you no offense, Monsieur, but I think we would both greatly prefer if we each kept our distance from one another. I can see no benefit in doing the opposite, and I am quite sure it would be a relief to both our dispositions to remain only acquaintances."

Still without words, Javert gave a small nod and did not watch as she closed the imposing oaken door of his office, though he could still hear his subordinate's unsteady steps disappearing down the hallway. Sitting back in his chair, absentmindedly listening to the peaceful sound of the crackling and hissing of the burning log as he contemplated the astonishment he felt at the sudden eloquence and reason his usually backwards subordinate had just showed him. Only acquaintances, he mused to himself, or at least as closely as he was capable of musing. Javert took up his pen again, the steady scratch of the men against the parchment soothing him, and he decided that his subordinate was probably right in his suggestions. Even if he did somewhat approve of the young, suddenly serious Louis Pont-Thenard, he had said only just today that he loathed being in the presence of others. Perhaps, he thought vaguely while signing his elaborate signature at the bottom of a single page, the young man felt the same way in the company of others.

A few moments later, however, a rapid and slightly frantic knocking fall against his ears heavily, a knock which he recognized as Rouvette's, the young man who he had commanded to spy on his subordinate.

"Enter," Javert said with a small sigh, glancing up from his work only after he had completed his signature on the bottom of another warrant. Rouvette stood before him, his posture as perfect as an eager young soldier, his large lips pursed as if he could barely contain himself from blurting out some new news. "Yes, boy?"

"Well, Monsieur Inspector, I thought you might find this interesting." He began, only continuing when the Inspector gave a curt nod in permission for him to do so. "Each night, by the time both Rousseau and I return here to sleep, Monsieur Pont-Thenard is already dressed for bed. And, each morning, he rises before either of us and dresses for the day. But this morning I woke unusually early, while he was still dressing." He paused again, resuming his speech only when Javert consented with another short nod. "He had not yet put on his shirt, but there were multiple strips of linen tied about his chest, as if he was binding some fresh wound so that it would not bleed. When Monsieur Pont-Thenard realized I was awake, he seemed to become violently upset and hurried to finish his dress with his back turned to me. When I asked him about the strips of linen, he became defensive and claimed that it was for an old back injury, and that the fabric worked like a splint for his spine and lessened the pain."

"I see." Javert said, folding his hands together. "That does interest me." He admitted, making a surge of pride run through the young man in front of him. In evidence to this pride, the young man's lips seemed to curve upwards slightly in a smile, and his head tilted back further. "I'll be quite sure to ask him about his injury. You may leave me now if you have nothing else to say, Rouvette."

"There is something else, though I did not think it was of much more importance." The young man said, his eyes sharp and attentive, though he looked slightly doubtful. Javert looked up for a moment to show that he was listening, and he said in a slightly less dutiful voice, "He had scars. Many of them. All over his arms and torso."

"Scars from what? Burns? Cuts?"

"I'm afraid I was not close enough to tell, but there was little continuity in their shape." He paused but said nothing further, his eyes clouding as he tried to read the Inspector's face. "That is all, Monsieur Inspector." In silence so as not to disturb his superior, Rouvette gave a small bow and stepped out of Javert's office, leaving the older man to his own thoughts, a spring in his step as he walked down the corridor to his own advisor's office.

Unable to concentrate on the work piled in front of him, Javert stood from his desk and stepped over to the glowing fire, the heat instantly making itself known against his legs as he stood over the hearth. His jade eyes narrowing into a thoughtful stare, he peered into the smoldering depths of the fire, watching as it slowly ate away at the illuminated log like a cancerous disease, eliminating and obliterating all life as it did so. The firelight reflecting itself in his fine green eyes, he silently attempted to decipher what this new piece of information about his subordinate might mean. Javert was not, nor had he ever been, a stupid man. It did not take him long to formulate a hypothesis concerning his young subordinate, nor did it take long for his eyes to pinch into a highly proud glare as he thought of the possible validity of his suspicions.

Shaking his head to himself while still staring into the flames, Javert struggled to acknowledge and name the emotion rising within him, swelling and grabbing hold of him to leave a bitter taste in his mouth. After some minutes, he realized that it was, in fact, disappointment. Louis Pont-Thenard was not by any means the best subordinate he had had through the years, nor was he particularly manageable, but, throughout the past few weeks, Javert had found himself taking to the young man's company a little less grudgingly than all others in his life. Everything their superior officer had said in his favor was true. He was quick to wit, amiable in strength even at the disadvantage of his size, and had enough sense to fall into the light of the law instead of the shadow. He even saw a bit of himself in the small man, but, if his hypothesis was correct, he would hold nothing but severe disappointment and perhaps anger for having been deceived so skillfully.

Sighing again, Javert brought his hand to his temple and forced his eyes away from the sight of the fire, rubbing them as they began to ache from staring into the smoggy light for so long. No matter how much pride and admiration he had for Louis Pont-Thenard as a quickly becoming officer, he knew very well that a single problem in the legal system could engulf and destroy everything he and the other police officers of Paris strived for. Like the fools who currently believed themselves to be plotting a second revolution, he knew that, if his suspicions were right, he would have to snuff out his subordinate's flame just as quickly as the young men's. It was simply his sole duty, and not a thing would be able to force him to bend in service against the law.

Slumping back behind his desk, Javert sat there, his head tilted back after the day's exhaustion, his arms hanging limply by his sides. When his subordinate came back into the room, dressed in his spare uniform and looking much more comfortable, neither of them said a thing. But, when they both returned to their seemingly endless paperwork, he found his eyes drawn back again and again to the image of the young man sitting over the hearth, his thin legs crossed like a child's as he rifled and sifted through different documents that absorbed his entire attention. Javert found, to his annoyance, that it was far too easy to imagine him as a woman.


	5. Chapter 5

"Post!" Santiago shouted, holding up several white envelopes in his thick, tanned hand as he stepped into the bunk rooms. Walking into the room with a jovial step, he frankly tossed a single envelope at Rouvette's head, Eponine give a small laugh as the small square bossed off the young man's head, making him flinch slightly. "One from my lady!" Santiago declared, walking into the center of the room with a falsely pompous stride. "And a particularly thick letter for Monsieur Pont-Thenard." He called boisterously, his eyebrows arching upwards as he handed the other envelope somewhat more good naturedely to a fairly astonished Eponine, who was seated on her top bunk.

Taking the envelope with a confused expression, Eponine's mouth curved into a perfect, delighted '_o_' as she recognized Marius' pretty hand writing. On the front of the envelope was written the name and address of her false identity and, ignoring this, she ripped open the top and pulled out two folded pieces of yellowed parchment, her hands moving as quickly as she could command them. On the top of one paper was a clearly written address to Louis Pont-Thenard, asking him to please forward the other letter to the current residence of Eponine Thenardier. With a less than amiable expression, she quickly abandoned the first note before savagely pouring into the other one, her eyes sliding unblinkingly over its contents as she drank in the sweet, familiar sight of his swerving scrawl, her eyes narrowed slightly as she deciphered each word with an agonizing slowness.

The other two men were two absorbed in their own letters to notice the strange transition of emotions that their companion went through in a mere matter of moments, but, if they had noticed, they would have been considerably confused. At first, Eponine's round cheeks were pink, her warm brown eyes shining with joy, but, as her sight fell through the remainder of the letter, the charming flush of her face was lost, replaced by an immense pallor, and the initial joy in her eyes was replaced with a strangely horrified sorrow. Her sadness and evident anguish could be at once found in the contents of the letter her adoration had written to hers.

_Dear Eponine,_

_Now more than ever do I wish for your company. You know, Azelma told me that you left for the country for several months, but she never told me what for. I am wondering slightly, but that is not the point of this letter. As of late, I have found myself taken with a young woman who is seen often walking with her father. I do not know her name and I do not know her current residence as she has since moved from her original one, and the place where I went nearly daily to catch a glimpse of her, the Luxembourg gardens, no longer seems to be in her favor. I have now not seen her in a long three weeks, and the feeling is more horrible than I could have ever imagined before this trying separation. I am a man torn apart, a being without a relic to worship. I write to you because I know that, if you were here, you would at once assist me in finding her. I do not doubt your abilities to do so. I pray that you will return from your holiday soon so that you my help me find her. _

_Hoping you are well and hoping you return soon._

_With great care, _

_Marius Pontmercy _

She read the letter several times through to make sure she understood the full extent of it, but as she did her heart sunk further and further into her chest, and her despair continued to greaten in its intensity. The only delight she received from the letter was the very bottom, where Marius had signed, '_Hoping you are well and hoping you return soon. With great care, Marius.' _She read the line again and again, remarking to herself wearily that he hoped she was well and hoped that she returned soon and that he wished dearly for her then, she told herself bitterly, he only wanted her company so that she could help him find another woman, a nicely clothes girl who was probably prettier and smarter and kinder and much more deserving of his attentions. Her eyes glazing over, she laid back over her stiff cot, her small hand still clenching the thin paper in her hand to dangle from the high surface of the bunk like a weak and pitiful flag.

The breaking of her heart as his kind words echoed in her mind was loud enough, she felt, to ensure that she would go deaf, and no words could describe her grief. If the other men had not been in the room she would have dissolved into tears within moments, but she dammed her emotion for propriety's sake, if not to ensure that she did not look like some weak child in their eyes. As she did so, however, she felt her stomach clench painfully so that a small, minute exclamation of pain carved itself into her throat, barely escaping the attention of Rouvette, who she noticed was still watching her out of the corner of her eye. His attention only further upset her and she turned her face to the wall so that she could escape his sight, thinking bitterly that this ill bred fool had given her far more notice than Marius in all the time she had known him.

Closing her sore eyes heavily, she gave a soft groan, like a man in pain, and lamented the throbbing of her very soul as she tried to dispel the thought of her beloved with another. She had been wretched before as a poor rat of the slums, but now she was nothing short of miserable as she tugged slightly at the short brown strands of her cut hair to relieve her anxieties.

Eponine was in the middle of debating whether or not to read Marius' letter again merely for the sake of seeing his handwriting when Santiago's loud, happy voice burst through the air suddenly. "Listen to this boys!" The older man shouted, collapsing back onto his own bed and making a mockingly seductive face. "_My dearest Andrea," _He read aloud from his own post, his red lips falling open into a sultry part. "_My every thought turns to you without so much as a single question_." He lamented, pantomiming his lover's act of voice and expression. "_I lay awake each night, unable to sleep, tormented by an endless ache for your touch." _At this, the man laughed heavily, looking around confusedly a moment later when he saw no one joined him. Scratching his thick head of Italian curls, he looked up at his sole friend and said in a half joking voice, "What's the matter Pont-Thenard? You always laugh when my hussies write me."

"I apologize, Monsieur," Eponine muttered, her voice broken with dry tears, the likes of which she would still not allow brim over her eyes. "I'm afraid I am not feeling my best."

"Please," Santiago said with a wave of his hand, though his face and voice softened considerably at the evident misery plastered over his friend's face. "You were fine just a moment ago. What could have possibly ailed you since then?"

Walking up to the sulking young man, he roughly yanked the letter from his hand, raising it to his own eyes and reading speedily. Eponine sat up, her eyes widening, and Rouvette watched silently as her face fell into an even deeper pallor. She could have made an attempt to jump from the bunk and wrestle the piece of parchment back away from the older man, but, by the time she could have triggered her body to do so, he had already handed the thin yellow scrap back to her, his face only curious.

"Who's Eponine?" Santiago asked her simply. His face, though inquisitive, was calm for once as he quietly contemplated her, sitting back on his bed, relaxed. Calm and comfortable as he was, she could not have been more mollified at his question, and Rouvette, though pretending not to engage in their conversation, steadily recorded within his memory the strangely horrified reaction she displayed. He promised to himself that he would mention it to Inspector Javert later in the day, looking at his hands with a false act of boredom so as not to make the other subordinates aware of his close watch.

"My sister." Eponine concocted quickly, folding the letter carefully and wedging it in the space between the wall and her mattress, one thumb absentmindedly wiping across Marius' signature and his care as she did so.

"You never mentioned you had a sister." Santiago said, quietly, his voice now coming from below her as his bunk was beneath hers.

The two fell into silence, and their conversation seemed to have fallen into its grave until Rouvette's quiet interest got the best of his tongue. Folding his own letter, his eyes glanced up at the scene of Javert's subordinate who was laying with his face directed towards the wall, and he asked in a casual voice, "If she is your sister, then why does she not share your name? It seems rather odd to me that a sister should not share her brother's name."

Eponine was caught again. Sitting upwards gingerly, as if sore, she looked down at her little rat, her eyes flashing at him as if angered by his intrusion in her privacy. In a voice dripping with a passive venom, she said in a dangerously quiet volume, "We do not share the same mother. Does that satiate your constant need for information, Rouvette? Or shall I further enlighten you as to how I was a bastard child?" She made up within moments, scowling at him as her lies fell over his eager ears like the loud bangs of drums, becoming even angrier as she realized he was absorbing the false information steadily and without discomfort."Perhaps you would be interested in the inconsequential facts that my sister is dead, and yet I still receive mail for her because I do not have the heart to tell her corresponders that she has since died?" As she continued, Eponine's voice increased evenly in dynamic until she was practically shouting out of anger, and her pale cheeks turned into a vivid shade of scarlet as she continued. "I am quite tired of your rooting around in my life!" She barked at the silent young man, jumping from her bunk to land soundly on her small feet, her balance so agile and catlike that her body was not even slightly upset. With a loud, agitated exclamation, Eponine stormed out of the room without another word, and Santiago cast a grave expression towards the other man.

"You should have not provoked him so." He said, quietly.

Eponine, freed from her spy, sped down the hallway of the precinct, ignoring the bewildered looks of other officers as she burst through the oaken front doors of the grand building and tore down the white washed steps with a pointless pursuit. She had not meant to declare so many lies without first thinking them through, and she knew how much the accumulation could further endanger her, but the combination of the misery she pertained at the thought of Marius loving another woman and the worrisome fact that Rouvette might be beginning to see through her plot had made her upset enough to do so. It was raining, just as it seemed to be raining nearly everyday for the past few months of winter and spring, but she hardly resented the poor weather. It only served to mask her unmasculine tears, and for that she was grateful. Although she strode with a purposeful step, Eponine did not really know where she was going, only that she needed to escape from her life of lies for just a few short hours. She needed to escape from the law and from Louis Pont-Thenard, and she needed to escape from the tormentous realization that Marius had escaped from her fingers easier than water.

She did not command them to do so, but her legs soon carried her to the vast and inviting side of the rapidly moving Seine beneath the looming arch of a bridge. When her family had first moved to Paris after the disastrous fail of her father's inn, this exact spot had been the place that served as their home for a longer series of weeks she would rather forget. It was just as cold and sorrowful as she remembered it, and she did not doubt that it was still just as cruel and unforgiving. Staring into the black depths of the water before her, she clenched her fists and fought the urge to scream at the sight of the turmoil and pollution before her, and the disturbing memories of her time spent here. She had heard many stories of how, hundreds of years ago, the river had been a beautiful sight. Now it seemed to her that mankind had corrupted its once pristine waters to transform into a river of death and pain. No life could be found in its murky depths to her knowledge, and she was angry at the lack of care shown to the great source of life, just as much as she was angry at the lack of care shown to her own pitiful life.

In a fearsome silence, she tore her cap from her cropped head and threw the garment to the wet ground beneath her feet, remembering all the times she had wanted to drown herself during those dark months of her life when she hd lived in this very place. She should have done it, Eponine thought to herself. She should have done it then, sunk herself into the chilling water, ended her life for forever before the world had subjected her to the endless depths of despair, poverty, pain, hunger, and, worst of all, heart ache. In emotional exhaustion, she sunk to her knees in the black sand, wishing, in vain, that all of her problems would just disappear. Her eyes closed for some long amount of time, and, when she opened them again, her plagues had still refused to vanish. All about her, there was not a single trace of happiness; the cloudy sky was dark and dreary, grime smeared nearly every surface around her, and again the dangerous depths of the river seemed to beckon her with comforting arms, just as it had so many months ago. Her eyes empty as she stared into the liquid executioner before her, Eponine tried to call herself to perform the action of suicide, but she did not have the courage nor the strength to do so. She was unable to raise her weary bones up from the ground and, instead, sunk further into the wet sand so that it stained the neat cleanness of her trousers.

Perhaps, she thought to herself, if she had witnessed herself the affection Marius had claimed to have for his hussy, she would have done it. But she could not, because she was forbidden to see the one human being who brought happiness into her pathetic and twisted life.

Staring at the sky with an infinite wretchedness, she looked up at God, praying for some consoling words, but the only sounds that answered her was the pained moaning of the wind, the endless sobbing of the rain, and the drunken sloshing of the river over the deserted shore. Looking above at her Lord and Father, she cursed him for allowing her pitiful existence to continue even now that she desired nothing more than the quick extermination of her entire being.

Nobody wanted her, she knew quite well. People may keep her around to use now and again, but not a single person she could think of would actually ever want her. Her father and his gang wanted her to kill Javert, and that she had promised to do. Montparnasse wanted her for her body to alleviate his own insatiable desire, and, though he received some sort of delight from seeing her writhe with pleasure at his touch, it was all only for his own pride And there was Marius. Marius, she had hoped for some time, allowed her to trail behind him on errands and help him with various chores simply because he enjoyed her company, but now she knew that to be wrong. He used her, just as everyone else used her, and she was sick of it all.

She did not know who she was any longer, and she did not know who she wanted to be. She was not Eponine Thenardier. She had ceased being Eponine the moment her father had shorn her hair. But she was not Louis Pont-Thenard, either. How could she be when Louis Pont-Thenard had never existed in the first place? Question swirled in her mind in a hectic tornado, tearing apart her thoughts and dismantling her senses. If someone had called her name at that moment, any of her names, male _or _female, she would not have recognized the strangely unfamiliar syllables. Looking down at her palms, she realized that she could not discern them as a man or a woman's, and hastily tucked them away beneath her crouched legs so that she would not have to see their odd appearance.

"Who am I?" She murmured to herself, her voice barely audible against the loud pan of rain. "What am I? Why am I?"

Standing with a dull and distant ache in her knees, she was incredibly tired of life. She could barely stand, barely move, barely breathe without being in a nebula of agony. She did not ant to return to her old life and be reminded of the pains of hunger and abuse and oppression, but she could hardly keep herself together under the countless lies that were beginning to suffocate her very being. And she could hardly stand the constant pressure the Patron-Minette was assuming on her to end Javert's life, something she knew she would never be able to do. As corrupt as she became, nothing but Marius' safety could bring her to murder someone, but the monstrous men of her father's gang could simply not comprehend her hesitation at any sin, not when she had proved herself so applicable so many times before. Yes, she was very tired of life. She was tired of living, lying, loving, losing.

She was not Eponine Thenardier, nor was she Louis Pont-Thenard, nor was she anyone else. She was a criminal and a copper, a man and a woman, a sinner and a saint. She had no loyalties, not to a gang of criminals, not to a strict and unfeeling law, and certainly not to a God who never showed a single sign of acknowledging her. The only idol she had was a young man who wished for her company solely so that she could find some pretty girl in a lace bonnet for him. And even then her loyalty to Marius was beginning to waver in her grief. Nothing made sense to her anymore, and things were beginning to become too out of hand for her unraveling mind. She shuddered slightly before finding her way back to the damp and muddy road, but her mind felt so numb that she did not think of anything at all. Her body was only preoccupied with clinging to life, her lungs still swelling feebly with respiration, her heart still beating to force her thin blood through her veins, her lids still blinking over her blank eyes very few seconds to preserve their moisture.

"If I am not Eponine, and I am not Louis Pont-Thenard," She thought aloud to herself, her hand reaching into the pocket of her uniform to run her slim fingers over the ornate silver surface of her pocket watch. "Then I must not be anyone at all."

And, in that moment, Eponine truly believed she was nothing more than inconsequential beneath a God who never answered her prayers. In fact, if Christ himself had reappeared before her and announced his eternal love for her, she would have spit in his face and walked away laughing.


	6. Chapter 6

The skies were, for what seemed to be the first time in weeks, devoid of any rain, though ominous clouds still hung wearily above the heads of the many like menacing pounds of fearsome weather just waiting to drop their heavy load. The last hints of winter were slipping away quickly, but an unshakable coldness was still present, numbing the tip of Eponine's pointed nose and making her frost reddened fingers ache and burn, even through her thick black gloves. Passing a once fine iron gate that had warped since its former grandeur, she noticed the curling of small, wilting pink and white blossoms that had made the mistake of blooming too early, their browned leaves and petals wrapped along the black bars weakly. Her eyes still aching from the previous days emotional storm and her slim legs sore from running all morning in the damp and muddy streets, Eponine clenched her hands around the slim figure of her billy club before looking up at Javert, the disdain in her eyes silently wishing him to return back to the precinct and take her with him so that she could rest in the warmth of his office. The notion of sitting beside the hearth at the moment seemed to her a great delight and, perhaps besides Marius, she wanted nothing more than to warm her hands beside a lit fireplace.

Noticing her attention, Javert returned her look, but failed at reading its true intention. "I heard you had a slight outburst concerning Rouvette yesterday." He said, calmly, the slight haughtiness and disapprovement in his voice not unmissed by her. Casually, so that she would not notice the action, he dropped his pace so that he walked beside Eponine instead of leading her in his dutiful wake. His jade eyes narrowed with pride as he sneered at a particularly crooked looking man, his matted and lice infested hair just as ragged and grotesque as his filthy clothes, Javert looked at his subordinate through a sideways glance, waiting for her response to his comment.

"I am afraid you are correct, Monsieur Inspector." Eponine said, her throat straining suddenly in a painful fashion as she forced it into its lowest possible register. Coughing once to clear her voice of its dryness, she continued, her usually fluid tone disrupting itself so that her voice cracked several times as she next spoke. "But I will say one thing in my defense, Monsieur." Javert inclined his head slightly to show that he was listening. "It is quite tedious when your superior officer trusts you so little as to make another subordinate calculate your every fact and action. Even more tedious do things become when that subordinate pries so closely into your life that you have no choice but to relate increasingly shameful information to him."

"Then what he told me is true? You were born a bastard child?" The Inspector said, more interest in his voice than she had ever heard him possess. Silently, and not daring to bluntly ask him, Eponine wondered why this matter offered so much excitement for him, her dark eyes narrowing with concentration as she took her own sideways glance at his stony, composed face, finding nothing to satiate her internal questions.

"Yes." She lied, quietly, her eyes pointing directly ahead of her again so that she would not have to see his reaction. Her parents having been married by the time she was conceived was one of the few scraps of dignity that she had always felt could not be taken away from her, but now, under the pretense of Louis Pont-Thenard's shady past, that had been abandoned, too. "Everything else is true, as well. I have not once lied to you or to Rouvette." Biting the tip of her tongue, Eponine looked down at the scuffed tips of the boots that were too large for her, fighting the urge to laugh smally at the irony of what she had just said. When next she looked up, she was startled to find Javert staring at her seriously, his lightly colored eyes even more cold and dark than they were usually. As he continued to stare at her, the wind whipping the short tips of his red hair slightly, her stomach sunk at his fear invoking gaze and she felt her tongue numb just as acutely as her nose. Whenever he drifted his cruel, unforgiving eyes into hers, Eponine felt as if she was staring into the very eyes of God himself, and she could not have been more afraid for her very soul as the memories of sin after sin sunk into her mind vividly.

"I apologize for my intrusion of your privacy, then." Javert said with a slight huff, as if it pained him to admit the word _apologize _into his speech. "How long has your sister been passed?"

"A little over four months." She replied, quickly, her hands folding against her back mechanically as they did whenever she became nervous or agitated, mirroring his reflection in one swift motion.

The Inspector gave a grunt to show that he had heard her, but said nothing further, and Eponine was glad for the death of their conversation. She had meant it when she had proposed that they should each keep their distances from one another, but it seemed that curiosity kept forcing him to inch closer and closer into her privacy. She was not quite sure if he always had this much curiosity in his subordinates, but she was not at all comfortable with his pressing her to divulge all matters of her fake identity's life. She was not even entirely sure why, since she no particular attachments to the character of Louis Pont-Thenard and could care less whether or not he was a prince or a drunk. She only wanted to have the approvement of others, but, as more questions and situations arose, it seemed to Eponine that Louis Pont-Thenard was becoming more of a drunk than a prince.

"You must have enlisted soon after she died."

"Just eight days afterwards." Eponine murmured, her eyes darting quickly at the expanse of cobbled road in front of her as they stepped into the mouth of a new street. Eying the various number of beggars and cons and even a prostitute who had decided to display her sultry wares during the day, Eponine pursed her thick lips and crossed her arms over her chest, realizing the very arrogance of her posture as she did so. Several months ago, if she had passed a man like herself on the street, it would have been hard to restrain herself from spitting at his feet and giving him a good glare, she thought to herself somewhat distantly.

"You were her main guardian?" He asked after a few minutes of silence, pausing in the street they were walking through to make his presence known to a young dandy that seemed to be eying a bourgeois man a little too closely. She thought for a moment that the man was perhaps Montparnasse, but then realized her old childhood friend and partial lover would never have let his hair grow as unmanageably as the young con before her. Tipping her chin upwards, however, she realized that the dandy she often saw hanging around her old friend, like a petty dog following its master in awe. She labeled him, at once, as a man who offered more trouble than he did danger, and she did not bother concerning herself with him any longer.

"I was." Eponine said, shortly, her clipped words hinting to the Inspector that she did not wish to speak of her fake particulars any longer. To her vague annoyance, he did not seem to understand what the shortness of her speech implied, and she found herself giving a noiseless sigh as he continued to interrogate her casually. "That man there looks suspicious." She said, tilting her head to indicate the same young dandy who had caught Javert's attention. He nodded in agreement and watched closely as the man slid from the grimy wall he was leaning against, his heavily lidded eyes twisting upwards and observing the two officers watching him. With a mocking politeness, he nodded his head in a false bow of respect and moved into the building he was leaning against, abandoning any attempts to earn some quick money as soon as he noticed the two pigs watching him like lions about to seize prey.

"Neither of your parents supported her?" Javert asked, resuming his lounging stride and looking at Eponine almost thoughtfully as he did so.

"My father is a con. He would not bother with us unless he needed something done." She said, thinking of Azelma and almost forgetting who she was talking to for a moment. As her last few words left her mouth, she noticed the inquisitiveness of her superior's gaze and quickly said, "But we both kept our hands clean as often as we could, and now I'm making up for all the petty sins he made us commit." Her last explanation seemed to please him, and Eponine grimaced to herself at the ease in which she had so quickly revealed the true facts that her father was a criminal and that she had occasionally done his handiwork. In fact, gazing at him in slight awe, she was quite shocked that he had accepted this information so readily.

"I repeat what I said before," He said, his voice as devoid of any feeling as it always was. "You should be quite proud of yourself. Very few would have made the same decisions you have, especially when they have led such a poor quality of life."

"Does that very few include you, Monsieur Inspector?" Eponine asked, quietly, her earthy eyes shadowed by her thick, dense lashes, giving her a slight air of sneaking prettiness behind her masculine disguise. Looking at his subordinate closely without an attempt to hide his observation, Javert noted to himself the dark, spidery lengths of her lashes, the roundness of her cheeks, the smooth whiteness of her complexion and the pink that the cold had induced in her skin. Looking away suddenly, his jaw tightened and his teeth clenched, the muscles in his neck tightening as he did so, and Javert mentally jotted down everything he had just seen in the record of his memory, forcing himself to ignore the evident handsomeness of his companion, suspicion racking his lithe body almost painfully.

In silence, he nodded, giving a rare answer to her questions, and said to her in a voice stiff and formal with concentration, "I think it is time you spend an afternoon patrolling by yourself. You seem to get on quite well without me already, and we would cover twice as much area separate." He spoke in such a way that Eponine, even with her quick wit and ability to see through the slightest facade, had not even the smallest clue that he was planning on following her and uncoding her every action so that he may gather more data for his further developing hypothesis. It would waste time that could be better spent apprehending criminals who he knew were in the offense, but, if his ideas were right, this would be the more important duty at the moment.

As he followed her, Javert was quite surprised by the inattentiveness she regarded him with entirely, though she seemed to notice everything else that would have caught only the eye of a well trained police officer. Even when she slipped off on her own, walking with an almost saunter that made him frown as he followed her with great stealth, Eponine did not notice her superior's officers attention as he tread cautiously behind her. He watched, slightly proud in himself for having trained his subordinate so well, as she inspected alley after alley, street after street, and even went so far as to walk up to a particularly seedy looking man, spitting a mess of chewing tobacco over the filthy pavement, and exchanged some quick words and a haughty glare that even resembled him. Javert had had to suppress a small grin when the man retreated somewhat reluctantly into a poorly built structure, Eponine sneering at the man's back boldly as he did so. It seemed to him that his own behavior had made quite an impression on the young Louis Pont-Thenard, and, with this in mind, he nearly forgot the reason why he was watching his subordinate in the first place.

Javert was even more humbled by the quality of the young man's work when he watched Louis Pont-Thenard perform an action he knew was something he himself would probably never be able to accomplish. While doing a quick scan of a small fish market, Eponine had crossed upon a small child being tended to poorly by a busy vendor, sobbing its very soul out for some reason he would never be able to comprehend. She had immediately stepped up to the child and crouched down to its minute height, whipping out her pocket handkerchief in an instance to wipe at the child's tear stained face, and he had looked on, silently amazed by the tenderness she so readily displayed and that he so completely lacked. As he continued to watch, Eponine picked up the child and hoisted it upon her shoulder, stepping on a spare crate and shouting to the milling crowd of peasants, servants, and bourgeois alike, calling for the missing parent. When the child had been claimed, he had watched distantly as his subordinate raised a thin hand in farewell to the small being, a gentle smile gracing her lips as the child returned the action.

A moment later, however, Javert's gaze had turned once more to suspicion as his subordinate looked around warily before slinking fox like into another side street, one he knew well as a host to the young men nurturing the rising rebellion. The cafe Musain stood at the end of the street like a wart over the palm of the city, the very place that was growing the worrisome rebellion in its womb, and, at first, Javert believed the revolutionary meeting place to be his subordinate's destination. But when Eponine stepped into the direction of the Musain, she merely immersed herself casually into the cool shadows, blending into the background of buildings and storefronts as she watched a number of young men file out of the cafe, their eyes lit with a fiery spark born from alcohol and political fervor that made him grimace contemptuously. When a particular young man with dark curly hair and a worn coat stepped out of the peeling wooden door, Javert's subordinate tucked his cap over his head forcibly and crossed his thin arms over his chest before looking down and walking with a falsely produced causality in his step, away from the Musain and away from the street and away from the young man. Eponine, through all her attempts to look just like another officer, did not escape Marius' attention as she walked away, and Javert watched the entire drama fold out before him again in silence.

The young man walked past Louis Pont-Thenard without a thought but, when noticing he was an officer, looked back warily, perhaps worried for his still unready rebellion. Even from his distance, Javert could see the handsome man's eyes narrow into a contemplative peer and, strangely, his subordinate suddenly jerked away from the man's gaze, looking frantic and worried. But, as she did so, the man's hand clamped on Eponine's arm, and Javert witnessed her face pale into a sickly whiteness, her eyes darkened with concern and what looked like fear as she turned back to look at her discoverer. Even more aberrant was the evidence of the young rebel returning the look with even more disturbed qualities, his pretty eyes looking frightened and even somewhat angry as his captive led him into a small, narrow opening between two buildings, immersing them both in hidden secrecy so that, if someone else had happened to have walked by them, they would not have noticed a thing.

From where he stood across the street, Javert could not hear a single word the abnormal pair said, though their lips moved simultaneously with an ecstatically horrified energy, the young man gripping his subordinate's shoulders as she held her own head in her hands weakly, her eyes refusing to meet his. Even more suspicion marring his entire being, the Inspector moved carefully from his position so that he stood with his back to one of the buildings forming the crack the two young men were concealed in, listening to their conversation with eager ears as he stared ahead of him at the quickly emptying street.

"I can't believe you." Marius hissed at her, though there was no anger in his voice or face at all. His expression was serious and upset and even a little frightened, but she could detect no rage at all in his handsome features, and for that she was grateful. If he had been angry at her, Eponine did not think she would be able to cope with herself for much longer. She may have repeated yesterday's stunt by the river with an entirely different ending.

"You think I wanted to do this?" She whispered back, her voice high, her throat clamping painfully, and her heart beating wildly as he touched her, the looks of worry in his eyes also making her chest contract painfully. "Do you honestly think this was my own decision? My own ambition?" As she continued to speak, Eponine's voice became higher and thinner with distress, and the hot pricks of tears began to cloak over her eyes as her breath became rapid and uneven with panic. "Who do you think made me do this? Who has so much power over me to do this?" A small exclamation of emotional pain left her throat, fearful of the Patron-Minette if they concluded that someone had discovered her, not for herself or her own safety but for that of Marius. Thinking of this and remembering the threats her father had made against her beloved, her hands moved to clutch his own arms and she pressed her forehead against the comforting expanse of his chest, her eyes shut so tightly that she could not see the look of discomfort covering her friend's face as she did so. "You mustn't be angry with me." She sobbed into his warm body in a barely discernible mutter, her words were so mangled from emotion.

"I cannot believe this." Marius said back to her sharply, sacrificing his own discomfort and wrapping his arms around his friend's body as her hot tears soaked into his thin shirt. "You are too fragile for this. You are going to get hurt. You could get killed doing this."

"If I disobey him I will experience worse things than death." She answered him darkly, the grip of one hand tightening on the fabric of his coat sleeve. "You know I would rather die than ever become one of. . . ." Her voice shaking too erratically to continue, Eponine had to pause, her breath coming in horrified and painful sounding gasps as more sobs racked her body. Trying to comfort her, Marius placed a hand against the back of her head, frowning at her shortened dark hair as he did so. His movement appeased her somewhat, and she calmed enough to continue. "You know I would rather die than ever become one of _them. _You know that as well as I do. Whatever I do I can't sink that low."

"Why did you not tell anyone in the first place?" He demanded her, his voice becoming increasingly agitated, and Marius began to feel a wave of guilt invade his body as her sobbing worsened again at his tone. "Why did you not go to the police?" He asked more gently, ruffling her hair in his bare hands with a soft touch, somewhere in the back of his mind surprised at the smoothness of her short dark strands.

"Do you really think the police would have ever believed me?" She said, her voice airy and sharp, filled with a pain he could not possibly understand. "They would have taken one look at me, the scrawny, filthy daughter of a con, and they would have spit in my face and thrown me back onto the street. And then my father would have made me into something more financially useful for him." Her grip tightening on him again, as if afraid he would somehow slip through her thin fingers, she said in a whisper so quiet he could barely hear, "And he said. . . he said that if I didn't do it that he would hurt you."

"Hurt me?" Marius asked her incredulously, watching as Eponine pulled her face away from his chest to look at him with wide, tear soaked eyes. "Why would he say he was going to hu-"

"I knew it." A deep, menacing voice hissed, cutting Marius off in mid sentence and making him jump. He looked up to see, in the opening of the alleyway, a malicious looking Inspector, a mixture of rage and frightening contentment flaring in his wolfish face as he grinned at his subordinate, displaying two rows of sharply white teeth. "I _knew _it." Javert repeated. "I knew you were a woman." With an impossibly strong grip, he tore Eponine from her friend's shocked arms, gripping her body in his hands so tightly that she felt her brittle bones begin to strain beneath his large hands. "You treacherous bitch." The Inspector spat, feeling a familiar burst of pleasure flood his veins as a small noise of pain and fear escaped Eponine's lips, delighting him inexplicably.

Before he could say anything further, a scream split through the air, perking both officer's ears as it hung heavily in the atmosphere, widening Eponine's brown eyes as Javert's jade ones narrowed. The Inspector stood, his hands still wrapped impossibly tight around Eponine's arms, torn between rushing to the source of the scream and apprehending and dispatching his subordinate, while Eponine herself became increasingly agitated as an eery silence hung over them all like a massive weight. Seconds fell away as he did nothing but stare into the small section of street that the alley bisected, not knowing what to do, and, with a rough and violent shake, Eponine tore herself from his vice grip and shoved past him, escaping into the street, and he quickly followed her, whether to recapture her or rescue whatever poor creature was in peril he did not yet know. Marius, not knowing what else to do, followed them both, though both men could not possibly match the intense pace of the young woman sprinting ahead of them towards whatever scene of trouble had found itself strikingly near two of the best officers in Paris.

She, in a matter of seconds, deduced the scene, and, just as she had expected it to be, fate had decided to confront her with her father and his gang today. From what she could see, the Patron-Minette had decided to jump some poor bourgeois man who was putting up quite a fight, and a young woman, her hair long and blond and her pretty face distressed and pale, stood apart from them all, presumably the aged man's daughter. As soon as the multitude of rats saw two policeman rushing towards them all, a few scattered, running off into the street and allies, but there was nothing either of them could do about the escaping vermin. Thenardier, at first, only saw his daughter, and he did nothing to release the man the few remaining criminals were still detaining, but as soon as he saw the Inspector, attempts to make his heist look like a mere greeting commenced. The man was released, a few other men slipped away, and Thenardier stood back from his target, grinning politely at him as he folded his hands together in a failing attempt at kindness. The blond haired daughter at once clung to her father, the poor soul trembling slightly like a leaf in the dying winter wind, and Eponine saw, through her buzz of adrenaline, Marius rush up to them both. She found it strange, because she could see both the man and Marius' lips moving but she could not hear a single word they said, blood was pounding in her ears so loudly. Not knowing what to do, she stood, her legs shaking gently, as Javert scowled at her own father, who, in turn, began to shout angrily in words that seemed like nonsense to her.

Their actions, however, of which she could perfectly interpret, surprised her somewhat. Javert seemed to be on the verge of arresting Thenardier when the seedy man said something she could not understand, his gray tongue slipping across his broken, tobacco stained teeth as the stony man glared at him, one hand buried in the criminal's ratty hair tightly so that the wiry strands of his hair pulled at his scalp painfully. Looking back at the place where the bourgeois man and his daughter had just stood with Marius, she saw, to her numb interest and slight disappointment, no one there. All three had vanished into the night, leaving only herself, Thenardier, Javert, and the few other men who had decided to stay loyal to their gang leader in the street. Of the men, Montparnasse stood closest to her, and, the tip of his tongue poking through his grinning teeth, his demeanor was cheekily sultry as he stared at her, and she stared back at him as if he was a complete stranger, her eyes looking distant and fearful amidst this collection of dangerous men. When next she glanced back at the Inspector and her father, the latter had been released and the former was staring deeply into the spot where the other collection of people had stood before disappearing.

"Seeing as, Monsieur Inspector, there isn't a single wronged person to be found here," Thenardier began, bending his shoulders and lurching over to Javert's silent side like a mange ridden dog begging for a treat from a fearsome master. "We all could just be on our own ways tonight."

"Yes." The Inspector said, quietly, not removing his eyes from the empty spot, as if there were still a number of people standing there, waiting for his attention. "If I see you repeat this stunt again, though, Thenardier, I'll see you strung up on a wire by your fingers for the crows."

The remaining vermin ran off, all in their own directions, slinking back into the filthy gutters of which they were conceived, born, and raised, and Javert looked back at his subordinate. His eyes slid over her body as her usually warm brown eyes stared at him, now empty, cold, and fairly emotionless, perhaps waiting for the still wordless man to say something to her. When he still clung to his silence, his pale green eyes unreadable as they centered on her face, she took a slow step backwards before turning away from him and simply walking away. Wondering vaguely what he was possibly doing, Inspector Javert thrust his hands in the pockets of his trousers and watched her walk away, his face as composed and contemplative as a clergyman's in a cathedral.


	7. Chapter 7

**Sorry for the late update. Internet was down yesterday. Don't forget to review, your feedback keeps me writing and it is much appreciated.**

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Javert sat at the desk in his bed chambers, a hectically composed journal of sorts open before him, a frantic scrawl covering nearly all of the thin, slightly warped pages. Here and there folded and yellowed documents were splayed and scattered around the journal, all arranged in a seemingly specific order, completely cryptic in the arrangement's codification. Had someone peered over the stoic man's shoulder to glance at the multitude of wrinkled and heavily ink stained parchment, they would have noticed all papers connected to the what appeared to be the same man. The names Jean Valjean and Monsieur Madeleine were scribbled here and there in between hastily written sentences along with the number 24601, all crammed between thin and compacted margins. His stony face set in distant concentration, Javert stared fixedly on one of the various names, his pale lips pinched together, his massive hands clenched at his sides so firmly that his knuckles had gone white long ago.

The silence in the room was so thick and heavy that, when a small click popped into the air behind him, the small noise seemed almost deafening, clapping against his sensitive ears like a roll of thunder or the crash of a symbol. He did not even have to turn to know that it was his subordinate, her footsteps were so light and hesitant. His grip tightened on nothing but air itself as he sensed her standing directly behind him, but he was thinking too quickly on fugitive he had long been hunting to pay her any attention at the moment. He should have gone after her, he knew, apprehended her, arrested her for fraud and impersonation and some other violation that _must _be in his book of laws, or perhaps he should have gone to the precinct immediately and reported her to the other authorities, but he had done neither of those things. Why, he did not exactly know. He had felt dizzy with thought, thinking of the prospect that Jean Valjean had been so close to him, so close that he could have reached out with one massive paw and detained him at last, seen his aging face well behind bars at long last.

The thought alone was enough to fill him with rage, so much rage that he could not spare any more emotion for his lying, traitorous bitch of a subordinate.

"You did not report me. I went to the precinct to turn myself in, but when I walked in everyone was acting as normally as always." She stated, not at all a question, her voice thick and surprisingly smooth. If he had closed his eyes, he may have been able to imagine it coming from some super natural being. Not quite a goddess, but perhaps a sprite or a nymph, a being who sounded neither male nor female, or maybe sounded both male _and _female. In his hyper active thoughts, Javert could not decide, and chose not to dwell on the subject of his subordinate's gender. "And you did not come after me, either." She continued, her voice still just as abnormal sounding in the nearly empty, cavernous room. "Why?" She asked after a long pause, her voice incredulous, confused in such a way as to suggest she really could not fathom his intentions for declining to do either actions.

"Speaking in technical terms," He began, his usually rigid voice sounding degraded with something cousin to exhaustion. "I do not know for certain the actual evidence of your sex. Perhaps I misunderstood your conversation with that rebel." Javert said, more to himself than to her, his fingers drumming against his leg with a strange energy. "Or perhaps I did not hear you correctly." He said, further, the end of his sentence lifting upwards slightly, as if trying to clarify this with her, though he said it in such a way she would not have considered it a question.

Slowly, as if he was moving through a viscous substance, he stood and turned carefully to stare at her, and Eponine felt her stomach contract in on itself in nervousness as his all seeing eyes traveled over her eyes, focusing most of all on her face and chest and hips. Like a viper striking suddenly, his hands darted for the buttons of her shirt and, with a rough touch, he forced the garments open, snapping the two folds of fabric apart each time he undid one of the carved fastenings until he could clearly see the long strip of fabric pressing the smooth swelling of her breasts against the bony plane of her thin chest. Even without unraveling the thin material, he could clearly see the way the flesh of her chest expanded slightly even beneath the thick linen, and he had no doubts at all about what lay beneath. Something compelled him, however, to undo the remaining fabric that separated her flesh from his sight, and his fingers worked beneath the linen until it fell away in his hands. As soon as he caught a glimpse of her small, round endowments, though, his eyes quickly flitted back up to her face, darkened beneath a scowl. Her own face was defiant, her eyes narrowed just as well as his, her round face pale and serious, though she did not look at all embarrassed or ashamed, even with her breasts exposed to his cruel vision. With a guttural exclamation, he turned away from her hard set face and sunk back into the chair pulled to his desk, his eyes closed and his temple pounding in a ferocious head ache, his mouth feeling slightly strange after viewing her bared flesh.

It was not possible for Javert to deny the self anger rising within him about not having realized the exact and now clear difference with his subordinate any sooner. It meant incompetence in himself as a man, as an intellectual, and, most importantly, as an officer. If he had overseen this one obvious thing, how many other things of great importance had he overlooked? How many people had he failed to save, how many evils had he left on the streets? How many sins and troubles had his own ignorance allowed him to ignore because of his blindness? He was struggling greatly now, all of these questions strangling and suffocating him, choking him with a deep and dense smoke and making him feel as if, any moment, he was going to die from lack of oxygen. His head felt heavy and his chest felt tight, and he also could not refuse to acknowledge that the sight of a woman's flesh left a sinful aching deep in his core. Thinking of this, the powerful man felt his hands clench, his finger nails burrowing into his palms with enough force to cut through the thick leather of his black gloves and pierce his skin. Inspector Javert was not one to give way to desires of the flesh, but he had been under strain lately, especially with the information that Jean Valjean had once more escaped him, and his nearly constant self control was becoming harder and harder to access.

While he was struggling internally, Eponine retied the linen around her chest with a practiced hand and rebuttoned the front of her shirt, pulling her waistcoat on again and buttoning that article of clothing, as well. While his own thoughts were flying by faster than the seconds ticking away, hers were running as equally fast, so quick that she felt their effect beginning to bring a negative effect over her own body. Any person who ad happened to glance into her pale face, whirling with emotion and distress, would be ale to conclude at once that some great trouble was threatening her very existence greatly, and it could not have been more true. To Eponine, Marius was all she lived for, and now that he knew her secret, she could feel him walking farther and farther away from while she was stuck in a standstill. Marius was her life, but Marius was slipping away, under a worrisome threat by the Patron-Minette, and without him Eponine knew that living would be completely unbearable.

Well, she told herself firmly, feeling the tips of her fingers beginning to tingle, she just wouldn't be able to tolerate Marius' removal from her life, even if she had to go to the ends of the Earth to preserve their friendship and their nonexistent love.

"I'm," She began, her voice more choppy now as her heart began to beat more erratically, making him less impressed with her as he half listened to her fairly mangled speech. "I'm supposed to kill you." Eponine choked out, stooping to the ground at his side as she became more and more dizzy. With a hand that was shaking faintly with an unsteady tremor, she pulled from the mouth of her too big boots a small knife, expertly concealed in between the leather and internal material of the shoe. Eyes closed as if in prayer, she brought the knife to the top of his desk and set it there, upsetting the meticulously arranged paperwork, though he was listening to her too closely to care. "But I couldn't do it. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't do it."

Cracking open his eyes, he saw that she had pressed the palms of her hands against her forehead, like a distressed and upset child, and, for an exceedingly rare moment, he felt a strange breed of pity rise in him for her. Observing her now, Javert saw the fragile creature before him not as a fiend or a liar, but a young woman forced to do something she could not possibly have conceded to unless under a great amount of turmoil and pain. What that threat seemed to be, he could only assume by the conversation he had eavesdropped on that it had something to do with the young man the girl had clung to almost desperately. Star crossed lovers, he mused to himself darkly, two fools buried so deeply in darkness they would probably never see the light of justice until they were long bereaved from one another.

"If. . . if my father finds out that you have discovered me," She said, her voice shuddering as much as the rest of her body as her head bowed even more deeply, the very top of her head brushing slightly against his knee. "Then he will, no doubt, make me into a whore, and he will extend my punishment to a dear friend of mine. If. . . if he is ever injured, I do not think I would be able to live with myself." She paused, her breaths coming in uneven gasps now as her hands clenched over her knees. "But, if you report me, I will of course go to prison if I am not hanged. But the Patron-Minette will find some way to harm me and especially him even if I am behind bars."

"And what do you want me to do about it?" He hissed through gritted teeth at her, annoyed and upset even despite the sympathy he felt for the poor wretched creature. She could see, from where she knelt, the vein in his wrists jump out from his pale skin, creating curving and winding rivers over his clean looking flesh. "What could you possibly expect of me after I have been misled so thoroughly? You have broken at least a dozen laws if not more."

"No, Monsieur, there you are wrong. I have not broken a single law." She said quickly, her eyes snapping open into a wide, brown stance that made him feel increasingly uncomfortable. "I scoured that codification from cover to cover and there is not a single law that says a woman cannot serve her country as a police officer." Her face was open and truthful, but his face only darkened into a deep sneer that marred his possibly once handsome features.

"That is only because the notion is so ridiculous that only a man with an addled brain could possibly entertain the very idea. Perhaps you should be a whore." Javert practically spat at her, making Eponine flinch so that her eyes snapped shut again and her body began to shake greatly, her back and chest expanding jaggedly as she inhaled sharp intakes of breath that made her throat burn as if she had just downed a liter of whiskey. She buried her despair contorted face in her hands, and he believed her to have dissolved in tears. He felt, somewhere in his time and misery hardened body a sharp prick of guilt, but he refused to say anything further to her on that particular subject. When she next looked up at him, however, her face tear free and blank, completely lacking emotion, a sight which shocked him as much as he could be shocked, his own expression softened and he said to her in a quieter voice, "And what of your lover? That young rebel boy you held on to so frantically."

"Marius?" Eponine murmured, quietly, and he nodded stiffly. "I would do anything to keep him from harm." She whispered, her cheeks blooming slightly as she realized that someone else thought she and her handsome student were romantically involved. "Anything at all, Monsieur."

Silence invaded the room again, just as dense and heavy as it had been when she had first entered the small four walled complex. She stared unblinkingly at him, still crouched at his feet like a punished dog, and he became increasingly uncomfortable as he began to see the mechanism of her thought begin to work behind her eyes, turning gently like the winding cogs of a clock. She had a woman's body, he could see, but she had the complete working mind of a man, and an intelligent man at that. Slowly, she stood and shifted her feet against the wooden floor boards so that she stood in between him and the desk. With gentle hands so slow in their movements he may have called them timid, she first brushed the tops of his knees with her fingertips, her lips parted slightly, faintly astonished as he did nothing to escape her touch. Pressing her palms against his legs, she watched nearly fascinated as his face paled and his eyes fell away from hers, his mouth opening as if he meant to reprimand her, but not a single word abating from his lips to fall upon her ears. She was filled with even more consternation at his lack of protests when she slid her hands up the lengths of his legs, moving into him closer so that his face was a mere inches away from her own, his warm, clean scented breath tickling her skin.

She had to keep him quiet to keep Marius safe, she knew, and, in the rush of the moment, she could think of no better way to do so than with this clever if not sinful maneuver. His eyes drank into her face, fixating again on the way her long, dense lashes cast thick shadows over the smooth roundness of her cheeks, and her warm, alluring eyes cast deep into her face. Eponine could see in the vivid greenness of his eyes that he was struggling within himself to dispel her advances, but it seemed to her that she was winning the battle and he would not be able to hold his current position for very much longer. Even she could feel the stirring of her own loins for the touch of a man, it had been so long since that day Montparnasse had forced her against the wall and beat himself into her, and she could not have been more abhorred by the thought of sleeping with Inspector Javert of all men.

Remembering everything Montparnasse had ever done to seduce her, she entwined her arms behind his neck, trying her best to enchant and entice him as she brushed her cold lips against the warm skin of his neck, exciting a sharp respire of breath from him as she did so, almost as if she had driven the sharp needle of a vaccination into his arm. Listlessly, she raised her legs atop of his so that her knees were on either side of his hips, the hot area between her legs beginning to throb with a deep rush of blood, and, drifting a single hand back down to his waist, her pink lips curved into a small smile when she felt the stirring of his manhood beneath her hand and the coarse fabric of his trousers.

"You," He rasped in a voice multitudinous with beguilement, his chest puffing slightly and his chin tilting upwards as his back lifted from the chair. "You are no better than a common street whore."

"You upset me, Monsieur," Eponine replied in a silky voice, curling her fingers around the fabric that concealed his increasingly aroused member so that she felt him shift beneath her hand again. His hands still clenched tightly at his side, she reached down and peeled his gloved fingers away from his palm, tugging at the glove from his index until the small, intricate fold lay abandoned against the floor. Raising his unclothed hand to the skin of her cheek, she slid his fingertips over the smooth countryside of her face, breaking into an even broader smile when she saw his eyes go misty and distant in an instance. Fox like, her hand sneaked back down to his leg where she expertly traced her delicious and talented fingers back to the hem of his pants, daring to slide the tips of her fingers beneath the fabric just enough so that she felt the heat of his manhood against her sensitive touch. When she forced her appendage deeper into the slim opening of his trousers, diffusing her fingers over his sex abruptly, a guttural exclamation escaped him and repeated the single word _whore _in an even huskier voice as her fingers probed his figure with an erotically brave touch_. _Smiling, she replied in a voice dripping with sultriness, "Didn't your mother ever tell you not to talk to a lady that way?"

At this, his gaze darkened, and he stood up suddenly, pulling her hand away from his aching flesh and shoving her off of him in one broad sweep. His hands clamped onto her shirt fronts and Eponine hastily found herself dangling feebly like a coat from his hands, her small weight nearly nothing for him, the tips of her boots barely brushing against the floor as she stared into his menacing gaze. Her heart beating faster than a cat's when it has been caught by a wolf, she realized that, for the first time in a long time, she was actually genuinely frightened of someone. Her shirt cut into her back and arms painfully as he held her by the said garment, and the terrifying thought that he may simply rape her right there rang in her mind like an alarm, making a cold sweat begin to bead over her icy skin.

"Not another word." Javert whispered in a harsh command, and she nodded obsequiously, her head bobbing up and down with haste, silently begging to be put down again.

True to his demands, Eponine said nothing as he folded her into his arms roughly and more or less tossed her back over his bed, pinning her beneath his relatively immense body. The only betrayal she made him was when she gave a small squeak as she felt the sharp pressure of his sex pressing into her own heat with not even the slightest bit of restraint. Placing his hands over her thin shoulder, the Inspector forced his subordinate to sink further into the surface of the mattress, his weight holding her down and his hardening member still pressing against her clothed opening, radiating with insistence. The desire in his core had grown into such an intensity that he could not bother with disrobing, and, with his impossible quickness and a terribly familiar pulsing commencing between her legs, neither did she. Eponine no longer thought rape to be a concern as her fingers fumbled, undoing the front of his trousers, the front of hers, and then her hands fell back to her side's limply as she felt him pierce her. Eponine, her head spinning, gasped as she registered his body within hers, thick, lengthy, swollen with desire, and, above all other things, incredibly hot. He was larger by far than any other man she had ever had, so large in fact that a faint memory of the lazy day she had first slept with Montparnasse came back to her and she felt a whisper of pain while carrying him in her aching walls, he was digging so deeply into her and stretching her slit so wide.

Though he knew she had to be some kind of street rat, he had slid into her slick opening easier than he had anticipated, and Javert paused momentarily to raise a disdainful eyebrow at her, but, her cheeks red and her eyes hazy, she offered him no explanation and the action was short lived. Feeling her body around him, warm and wet and gripping him in her continuously pulsing walls, Javert suddenly realized that he _wanted _her. He wanted her body and he wanted the forbidden things she could make him feel and, though he knew it to be a huge sin against his name and soul, he would be damned if he did not have her. Without any more hesitation, Javert buried himself deeper into her small body, realizing at once by the pure pleasure coursing through his veins why he so rarely granted himself this fiendish act, and he began to move in that hypnotic rhythm they and the rest of mankind knew by prime and simple instinct.

He was a silent lover, of that she could tell at once as not a single sound escaped his throat other than the uneven noise of their ragged breath in the stale air mingling in a strange duet. Fisting her hands in his red hair, she brought his body closer to his, her pain forgotten as she moved her legs apart further so that he could plunge even deeper into the wetness of her womanhood, raising the intensity of their arousement even further as she dug her fingernails into his scalp. She tried to think of Marius, but it was far too hard to imagine him as the man forcing himself with great strength into her at the moment. He was too heavy, too quiet, too strong, too big, too lacking of care for her own comfort. Her mind just couldn't possibly focus on the prospect, so she instead concentrated on the pleasure steadily growing within her like the rising of a wave, growing and growing until she felt it crash over her in a devastating battlement of ecstasy. Matching his steady rhythm, she could not control herself as he slammed her again and again into his bed without even a hint of gentility, and a loud exclamation born from both pain and delight rang from her lips, sounding to him like the pealing of bells. Javert would never dare admit it to himself, but her cries of lust excited him more than he could ever possibly say, and, as she wrapped her arms around his body in an unpatterned twisting formation, his fingers, still ungloved on only one hand, splayed over her shoulder and neck, cutting off her airway slightly as he pulled her off the bed and forced her back down, repeating the rough action again and again until the motion felt for her as natural as walking.

"Good. . . God. . . ." Eponine sputtered at the force of his thrusting, her legs still shifting again to allow him a deeper entrance in her abused and lust racked body, her arms wrapping around his body to pull him more closer into her. Matching his agonizingly fantastic thrusts, her face an even deeper shade of pink as she let out another unashamed moan, Eponine's head bashed against the wooden headboard of his bed so roughly she knew for sure a splatter of bruises would cover her scalp for the next few weeks.

With one great push, she let out an even louder exclamation, her nails finding their way to the exposed skin of his neck to claw at the pale skin there, leaving red trails that oozed blood into the crisp white linen of his shirt, his blood also falling over her own face. His pounding began to speed up in frequency at her involuntary noises and, when it reached a certain point, Eponine could no longer contain herself; his lust was just too sincere for her. Her tight, damp body contracted around his stiff member as he led her into a fantastic bliss she had never before experienced, spasming in erratic sparks that made him feel like he might die their power of pleasure was so strong, but he did not suffer the same great experience as she did. Instead, he continued to pummel himself into her, his movements becoming faster and faster until she felt her body contract around his for a second time, even more fantastically extravagant as she climaxed beneath him again, the scent of his blood trickling into her nose strangely and the metallic taste of it staining her teeth as a drop of it slipped somehow between her parted lips. This time, as her narrow sex squeezed and tightened around his in an array of spasmatic sequences, he followed her example, and she felt the warm liquid of his seed spill into her purposefully, as if he was Adam and she was Eve.

Their heads clouded, Javert recovered from their rendevue first, and he did not spare any time in removing his now limp self from her motionless folds, leaving her sweaty, weak, not even making the slightest movement save the shallow rise and fall of her chest and the occasional fluttering of her long eyelashes. When the spinning inside his cranium slowed enough, he sat up and stood from the bed to fix his heavily disturbed clothing with an impulsive behavior, not even bothering to look back at his still unkempt and unresponsive subordinate as he did so. The many papers still scattered ritualistically over his desk called to him, and he sat down in the chair there, picking up his pen in his still warm fingers, but the thin layer of cool sweat over his body reminded him exactly the toll fucking the girl had had on him. Sensing that he was being watched, when Javert finally allowed himself to turn his head and look at her again he found Eponine staring at him coolly, untying her too big leather boots and kicking the black masses off of her small feet. Her chocolate hair was ruffled, like a country boy who had been sleeping in a barn, and her usually pale cheeks were a delicate pink as her heart still beat strongly in her chest, but she said nothing at all, and her nearly casual gaze only told him that she did not care much about what he next did. Staring at her, his posture as rigid as an eager and newly recruited militia officer, he examined her every movement with his sharp green eyes as she pulled open the thick coverlets of the bed and burrowed into their lifeless embrace.

Leaning back in his chair, Javert's attention was first drawn to the knife she had placed over the dark wooden surface, but he shoved it into the topmost drawer with an annoyed glance and looked again over his many rectangles of parchment. He could not seem to focus, however, and he turned back to find his subordinate still watching him, laying on her stomach, her head resting on her folded arms, her regularly amiable brown eyes empty as she looked him over. Something about her unfeeling gaze unnerved and, did he dare say, vaguely upset him, and the Inspector knew he would not be getting any work done that night. With a silent sigh, he stood again with a jolting step and fell back into the bed beside her, pulling the covers over his own shoulders and turning his back to her. They lay beside each other, so close they were able to hear one another's soft breath in the still night, but the two could not have been more distant.

The ridiculousness of what they had just did had not yet occurred to Javert. He had not yet comprehended that he had roughly and willingly fucked his subordinate, a woman posing as a man, and, as for Eponine, she did not feel much at the moment. Her entire being felt numb, her body, her mind, and her emotion all lacking something vital, though occasionally her thoughts drifted to Marius, and she felt a prick of guilt and pain, wondering what he thought of her now that he knew where, or rather _who_, she was. She tried not to imagine what he would look like if he knew what she had just done. It occurred to her, while her damp and aching thoughts danced about the image of her beloved, that, if she hadn't before, she truly hated the Inspector. She hated his always stony expressions, she hated the cruelty he showed to those most in need of help, and she hated him for letting himself fuck her. While she had touched her, she kept wishing to herself, somewhere in the back of her mind, that he would stop her and the two would somehow come to an agreement that would keep all persons involved in the ugly situation safe from harm. But he had not, and instead he had practically jumped to the action of sleeping with her with barely a moment's hesitation, something which she did not understand given his inhuman nature, and she felt the stickiness of his seed still inside her and trailed across her opening and the interior of her legs burning like a shameful, degrading fire. The consolation she received as he lay beside her without a word was that she had done it to keep Marius safe and, though she did honestly detest him, she had enjoyed the pleasure he granted her greatly.

A few minuted passed in a vast uncomfortableness neither of them had the energy to penetrate and abandon, but, in silence, he felt her small hand drift against his broad, fully clothed shoulder in a command for him to turn and face her. Obeying her soundless order, Javert shifted, his jade eyes narrowed with irritation as they met her still empty ones, though they were of a softer tone and hue than before, and he could not bring himself to object when she lifted his arm and wrapped it around her waste in the dark. His last thought as they fell asleep from the exhaustion of their fucking was that her body felt very warm, and hers was that she really did hate the man laying beside her, begging a wordless God to show her some mercy for what she had just done and perhaps to steer Marius in her direction.


	8. Chapter 8

**Alright. Nothing can excuse this obscenely late chapter. Except maybe an extra long one. So, here you go.**

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Both Javert and Eponine had fallen asleep in an inseparable distance the night before, each person confined to their own sides of the affectionless world, but when she awoke the next morning, the muscles of her stomach and back aching horribly, his thick arm was still nonchalantly tossed over her waist in their sleep, pulling her body closer to his. Remembering the previous night's events with a disturbing clarity, she moved hurriedly as much as she could away from him without waking the still slumbering man, her sore limbs screaming in protest as she wormed her way out from beneath his heavy arm. She could see by the thin sunlight filtering through the window of the room that it was still early morning, and, though it at first appeared to be a uniquely bright day, the sunlight only proved to be a false appearance of warmth. She could see by the frost glazed over the bottom of the closed window and the damp chill that hung in the air that the world was just as cold and cruel as it had been the night before.

Satisfied with the familiar misery of the day, Eponine's eyes darkened and, when a heavy exhale fell from his chest like a huffing sigh, her line of vision flitted back to Javert's face, which looked calm and composed and vastly different while he slept. Pushing herself up on one arm, she observed the way the sharp angles of his face had smoothed in just a few short hours, her pink lips parting slightly as her eyes narrowed, concentrating on the surprisingly smooth and pale skin of his face, the manly slope of his nose, and the thin brown eyelashes that she had never before been close enough to notice. With a tentative touch, still immensely afraid to wake him, her fingers brushed against the uniqueness of his red colored hair, drifting the pads of her fingers over the thick strands, noticing here and there a few silvery threads beginning to weave themselves in his neatly cut mane. While she watched him, he was no longer the heartless Inspector Javert who she knew would sooner stamp a man beneath his foot than offer a hand in helping. He seemed relaxed and at ease and completely blank of the stony glowers he was so accustomed to that he could have been anyone.

When he finally drifted into a waking state, Eponine's serious dark eyes were still focused on him intensely, but Javert did not falter beneath her heavy gaze for a moment as any other man would have done. Instead, he returned the look pointedly, and he watched, satiated, as her lips curved into a frown. With an annoyed exhale, she collapsed back over his firm bed, crossing her arms over her still uniformed chest, her cheeks flushing faintly as she wondered what he was thinking behind his emotionless jade eyes. Perhaps, she thought to herself, she would be less distressed if there had been something, _anything_, swirling in those twin green pools of his, but there was nothing, not even a hint of disgust or prejudice. Instead, the bitter irritation enveloping her entire body stood to be enough feeling for the both of them, and they said nothing and moved nowhere for some time. He only continued to watch her, and, though conscious of his examination, she stubbornly stared at the ceiling, her eyes dark and her shoulders tense.

"You are a very angry woman." He said after a while, sitting up from the bed without even the slightest display of the pain which smothered her each time she twitched a muscle. Her eyes broke their steady gaze, and she glanced at him as he stood, adjusting his mussed clothes and tending to the papers still abandoned over his desk, all of which he shuffled into a perfect state of order before replacing back inside the top drawer of the wooden structure.

"I have a right to be, Monsieur." Eponine spat, a flare of ugly argot hiding behind each provoked syllable. She wanted desperately to refrain from conversing with this man who she hated with every particle of her being, but just a few moments later words were already spilling out of her mouth, born from concern and fear, not for herself but for her Marius. "Are you going to turn me in?" She asked, her words sounding more thoughtful than concerned.

"I haven't decided yet." Javert said, stiffly, turning and leaning against his desk, arms folded across his chest, to look at her with his stormy eyes. His silhouette blocked what little sunlight came through the window, darkening the room and giving it a damp effect immediately, but he had no trouble in discerning the upwards twitch of her lips as the girl's eyes lit up with calculations and formulas, her thin, spidery fingers winding into the fabric of the bed clothes beneath her palms. He could tell at once that she was manufacturing some new tactic that would no doubt ensnare him further in his plans, but he could bring himself to be angry at her, he was too far deep in a dull astonishment. How she changed her moods so quickly he could simply not comprehend, and how a woman could be capable of so much thought he could not even consider.

"That is good," Eponine said eventually, sitting up gently with a soft groan and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Observing her, he was quietly disappointed by the thin curve of her shoulders, the fragility of her limbs, and the dark circles under her eyes that suggested illness. He did not remember ever seeing Louis Pont-Thenard looking so ill as his subordinate did now. "I have a proposition." She told him, tilting her chin upwards. "One I believe will benefit us both."

"I do not listen to propositions made by insolent children." He said sharply, his arms shifting into an even more menacing position over his chest, his eyes flashing at her dangerously. If he thought her a snake, Eponine thought vaguely as she returned his look, then he was certainly a mongoose. A cop and a criminal, she laughed internally without so much as an outwards falter. Eternal hatred seemed to be their destiny.

"After what commenced last night between us both I would hardly consider myself a child, Monsieur." She said in a striking reply, making the shadow of an enemy's grin appear in his eyes at her retort. "But if it bothers you so greatly, you may think it less of a proposition and more of a. . . ." Eponine paused, her tongue searching for the right word as he continued to stare at her intensely. "More of a _subordination_." She said with a small, mocking smile, drumming her fingers over the coarse blankets still beneath her small, womanly hands.

There was a long pause in the air, the silence stifling even the sound of their breaths in the damp air, until the Inspector eventually permitted a quick, "I am listening."

Eponine smiled and continued, her pompous demeanor making a curl of ash begin to smolder in his stomach like an unattended cigarette, burning away at him with a thick irritation that soon evolved into a plentiful annoyance. "You simply give the orders, Monsieur Inspector," She said with a cheeky smile only worthy of a pure gamin. "And I. . . I will obey them." Her voice caught on the last few words, and Javert was pleased to see her demeanor turn from rambunctious to genuinely willing in just a few short seconds, though he admitted to himself that he did not like the way she had dampened that spark of energy in her eyes to do so. Slowly, she stood, her small feet bare and pale and tinged with gray as she walked across the chilled floor boards to stand before him. "I will do anything." She promised, her eyes swerving across his face, searching for something in his inhuman expressions that they both knew had never existed.

"Anything?" Javert repeated, his voice about as warm as the air, his posture becoming increasingly rigid as she inched closer and closer to him.

"Anything." She vowed again, the single word coming out in a forced murmur. She was close enough to him now that he could memorize each twitch of her eyes as she continued to search his face, each movement of her lips as she spoke, and he could not have been more fascinated if Christ himself had fallen to the Earth that moment and stood before him. He had not spent much time with people in his life, and he certainly had no been so close to many, but Javert was intrigued by the strange being before him. He thought absentmindedly of the deeds of Joan of Arc and her sainthood, and how a virgin in men's armor had saved France from the English only to be burned at the stake for heresy. But the parallel he had drawn intersected as he remembered that his sluttish subordinate was far from holy, and that it was a mar to the virgin martyr's name to compare her with such filth.

"For him?" He asked, matching her volume as she spread her hands over the front of his chest so that he could smell the scent of her, clean and young and salty after the sins they had committed just a few hour ago.

"For him." Eponine confirmed.

If he had had not much restraint, Javert would have laughed at her. He had observed since adolescence how men and women of the greatest senses became fools when entwined in love's sinful thorns, and he found only amusement when observing such captives. It seemed they would go to all lengths for one another, until they ruined and victimized themselves until they had nothing to give one another but their lives. A triumph of that scourge called love, Javert's heart had never been touched by a woman, and he could take only pleasure in seeing another product of infatuations fiery consequences be destroyed.

He wanted to ruin her. He could not possibly deny that he wanted to see her broken, reduced to a shattered heap of idiocy and fatuity before him. Javert wanted to see her punished for the sins she had made him participate in the creation of, he wanted to witness the penalty the ludicrousness of love would have on her until eventually it wore away at her until she was just about as emotionless at him, and now she was unknowingly offering the chance for him to do all of those things, just for the sake of some stupid rebel who would probably not outlast his God forsaken revolution. It took his entire willpower not to laugh boisterously as he imagined her, bent and collapsed in on herself, given up to the tumultuous strains of life, so miserable she no longer cared what happened to her or her beloved. What he did not know was that Eponine was already wretched beneath his eyes, and that the fact evaded his watchful self like a bat in a cave.

So he agreed, only for the sake of entertaining himself for a short while while he ruined the already ruined girl. Javert told himself that, as soon as he became bored, he would report her at once and see her well and rotting behind cold iron bars. It would be the grand pinnacle of his amusement, but, for now, he would torture her slowly to make all of his pleasure last for as long as he could. He would make her very existence so painful that she would be able to muster only self hatred in her treacherous, Hell destined body, self hatred for being so unfaithful to the man she would do anything to protect from her own crooked family.

"You so much as disobey me even slightly," Javert threatened her in a harsh whisper, a hint of desire already leaking into his voice as she leaned the weight of her body through her hands over him, pressing her body into his so that he could feel the full extent of her thinness. "You may consider yourself done with freedom."

"That is no problem at all, Monsieur, since I already consider myself prisoner to your every whim." Eponine said, louder, standing on the tips of her toes so that her lips accidentally brushed the skin of his neck as she leaned closer to his ear. "No love, no affection, no courtship, no courtesy. Only orders and the utmost. . . willingness, on my part." She paused, as if contemplating the meaning of her own words, and her posture straightened into an inflexible position, her spine mimicking his rigidity as she continued. "You may count on only the greatest obedience from me, I assure you." She murmured, quietly, the perfect example of a subordinate before their superior.

"He is worth it?"

"Marius is worth everything, and much, much more." She assured him, her eyes rigid in their honesty.

Eponine would soon discover, however, that she was not worth much to Marius. For her unrequited lover, she fell into a spiraled routine with her superior officer, who in turn kept in silence about all of the secrets she kept for her beloved's sake. Nearly every day after their shifts had ended, she returned with Javert to his home and repeated something akin to their first night together. He would hold her down by her skinny shoulders, pressing her into the surface of his bed and thrusting into her with his entire strength until she could no longer contain herself and burst into a series of lust filled moans beneath him, moaning not for her lovely young student but for him. Every moment in his bed was rough and whispered of pain, but both Eponine and Javert would be lying if they said they did not enjoy it. When they each no longer had the energy to continue their sinful twist in his coarse linen sheets, she would rise silently, fix her clothing, rearrange her hair into a groomed state, and then return to her bunk at the police head quarters without even the slightest farewell. But, in the few weeks Eponine had been formulating this schedule with the Inspector, she had received not a single letter from Marius. She assumed him bitter or angry for what she was doing, and she had patiently waited for days, and then weeks, and then finally a month. The delay of his response and the ignoration she suffered at his hand was far worse than whatever pain Javert dealt her, and, her patience worn thin and her soul bent and racked with anguish, Eponine finally resolved to write her own pitiful letter to him. In its contents could be found countless pleas for his forgiveness and understanding, the thin parchment wrinkled and the dried ink runny with the ghost of tears she had shamefully cried.

Another transformation began to overwhelm her, much to Javert's pleasure, though it was not facilitated by him. Strangely enough, the Inspector was the cause of her pleasure, where Marius was the cause of her pain. Comprehending all of this, Eponine had begun to grow quiet and sad and empty of her previously proud and intrusive personality. She grew even more thinner, the purple circles under her eyes seemed to darken, and an over all sense of despair settled over her until she could feel it filling her lungs like tuberculosis, drowning her in misery while she struggled for even a hint of oxygen and happiness. Her entire body ached for her silent adoration, and the longer he denied her even a single word, the more her pain grew to be.

Finally, two weeks after she had sent her own correspondence, she received his distant reply. Roughly fucking the Inspector each evening had begun to take a wearisome affect on her, and she was particularly exhausted one morning after both she and Javert had kept themselves energized for much longer than usual the night before. She had the day off and, instead of going out to meet with the Patron-Minette, she was spending her rare day of rest curled into the surface of her cot, dozing as much as she could and trying not to think of the endless darkness that presented itself in her life. A jovial and frivolous whistling had interrupted her drowse, accompanied with heavy footsteps, and when Eponine opened her eyes Santiago stood on the floor beside her bunk, looking up at her and waving a yellowed and battered envelope in her face with a small whistle. Recognizing Marius' hand writing on the back of it, she had torn the ink smeared envelope from his hand ecstatically and ripped it open, her face pale with anticipation, dread, and excitement. This time, there was only one page of script in the envelope addressed to only one person.

_Dear Eponine, _

_I have denied myself the action of writing to you for some time for multiple reasons. First of all, I, recognizing my own anger, was concerned that I might say something hurtful that would deem my manner unworthy in your unfortunate eyes, and, secondly, the world has been very hectic these past few weeks. The revolution is coming quickly, Eponine, but that is all I can tell you of that. But an agony has tormented me as of late. I care little for eating, little for reading, little for anything, really, because her pale round face has haunted me so. I write you now, begging for your help as you begged me for my forgiveness, because I know that you must be able to offer me some assistance in finding the greatest angel of Earth. If you can bring yourself to recall the night in which we met near the Cafe Musain, you will remember the bourgeois man being robbed and his young daughter. I was shocked in the moment, all because it was she, she who I had been searching for for months. While you were detaining the criminals, they slipped away from your notice, and I tried to follow but quickly lost them in the dark. You must help me find her, Eponine. Do this task for me and I will never harbor any anger for your name ever again, and in that I promise. I've written what I know of her on the back of this parchment, but it is very little. I pray for you each night, Eponine, and I hope you pray for yourself as once. My last shred of hope lies in you, my dear friend. Your help would be worth a million francs._

_Hoping you are well,_

_With great care,_

_Marius Pontmercy_

Though the main business of his letter was concerned with another woman, the entire piece of parchment came as an opiate to her pain. She was numbed for a short while, and so pleased of his reliance on her that she at once vowed to do anything he wished. Combining her plentiful and hatched together street wit with the skills she had developed as a police officer, it did not take Eponine long to find the area in which the bourgeois daughter had to live. Her next step was to set to the streets where she knew the girl's kind to reside, and she simply waited. Each day she had to herself, she stood in a particular middle class street and waited, watching and listening for a sign of the girl and asking all other working class citizens if they knew anything about a middle aged man and a young woman with long blond hair. She found nothing of the pair for some time, though she wrote to Marius to tell him she was looking.

Not for many weeks did her work come to fruition, and, when it finally did, it cost her something of herself to gain the information her beloved so desperately needed. She remembered faintly seeing Montparnasse with the group of men trying to rob the bourgeois man on the night Marius had discovered her, but she had delayed seeing him until she had exhausted all other efforts because she knew exactly what he wanted from her, and she had neither the strength nor the will to give it to him. She was true to her promise that she would do anything for Marius, however, and, in desperation, she finally went to her old friend and semi-lover in hopes that he might lead her to the girl with the long blond hair.

Donning the thin and threadbare men's clothing she wore when off duty, Eponine climbed the rickety staircase outside of Montparnasse's apartment building until she reached his door, knocking at it and hoping he did not have any female company. It was mid afternoon, but when the darkly handsome man opened the door, his dark, suave curls hanging over his forehead messily, he appeared to have just woken, his shirt hanging open and his trousers looking like they had hastily been pulled up. It took him a moment to recognize her, but when he did, Eponine found herself being yanked roughly into his darkly lit flat, immersed once again in the familiar scent of cherry tobacco as he shoved her against the wall, his lips finding her neck immediately. She found, to some comfort, that there was no else in his messy and haphazardly kept living quarters for a rare change. There was nothing but the faded maroon velvet of an old and torn armchair, spilling its entrails of yellowed, cottony fibers, and his well used bed, shoved importantly against the cracked wall opposite her and sparsely covered with various shreds of blankets.

"I've missed you, _mon petite gendarme_." He said with a grin, his hands already spreading themselves across her bound breasts eagerly, his moist lips trailing down to her protruding collarbone and nipping at her skin.

"I need your help with something, 'Parnasse." Eponine said, quickly, placing her own hands over his chest to inch herself away from him carefully.

"And I need your help with something." Montparnasse replied, sensually, one hand lacing around her back while the other slipped snakelike up her shirt, feeling the small, cold mounds of her breasts beneath the thick linen that covered them. Feeling his hot and heavy hand over her flesh, she shuddered deeply before leaning into his touch, hoping that she might satiate him enough with just this one deed so that he would tell her where the bourgeois man and his daughter lived. As she moved closer to him, she felt his member pressing into her middle, insistent and demanding, and she sighed within herself heavily feeling exhaustion pull at her every cell until she thought she might collapse.

"I'll help you then, Montparnasse," She said, wearily, slumping against the wall before sinking into his long arms. "But you have to help me find someone."

"What makes you think I know where anyone might be?" He said huskily, his fingers working nimbly to unbutton the many garments covering her front. As her shirt fell away, he sighed before the image of her bony chest, tugging at once at the long strips of fabric covering her breasts, his sex stiffening even further as he ran his hot, damp hands over her exposed endowments when the rough linen fell away from her body. "Smaller than I remember," He observed slyly, his dark, bloodshot eyes flitting up to meet hers in the dim room. "But still just as arousing." He murmured, slicking his tongue over her chest so that a dull throbbing began beneath her legs feebly, her own ability to be aroused weakened after the incredibly frequency in which she had been laying with another man in the past few months.

His lips still tracing the lines of her chest, Eponine stared blankly at the ceiling as Montparnasse stuck his large hand into the lip of her trousers, his ungentle fingers jabbing into her folds and tracing the insides of her walls, inciting a guttural exclamation from her throat as she did so. With his other hand, he tore away at the front of her trousers and, within moments, he had buried his member inside of her, hot and pulsating and feeling immensely different after she had slept with the Inspector for so many weeks. She thought to herself, pensively, that there really was quite a difference between Montparnasse and Javert. Her old friend commanded too much affection out of her, but her superior officer offered her none at all.

"_Larger _than I remember," He hissed sharply, bucking his hips slightly to indicate what he was speaking of, his deep, silken voice reverberating around the bare walls to make her gasp softly. "You have been playing unfaithful to me, haven't you 'Ponine?"

She parted her pink lips, as if to make a reply, but he shoved one of his damp, sweet smelling hands over her mouth, and Eponine felt him retract his still swollen sex from her aching body. Snarling at her to bare his meticulously white teeth, he picked her up easily by her skeletal arms and pushed her back over his bed, giving an animalistic growl that still spoke of lust and desire behind his obvious anger. His fingers wrapped around her throat like hot and heavy casting irons, burning bruises into her flesh with his lack of care so that she whined and squeaked under his weight as he shoved himself into her again. Not removing his hands from her neck, Montparnasse's grip tightened, cutting off her airway as he began to beat himself into her, loud, unashamed noises falling from his lips as her warm, wet body enveloped him.

"Say you want me, you filthy slut." He cried in his sensual manner, his eyes fluttering shut as her lungs struggled for breath. "Say you need me, say you could not possibly _exist _without my assistance." Montparnasse whispered, breathlessly, his grip lessening on her so that oxygen flooded Eponine's lungs again and she was able to forge a reply as he continued to thrust himself into her, an accumulation of small grunts manifesting themselves in his vocal chords as he did so. In a reply, she nodded, but she could tell at once by the glower he gave her that he was not satiated by this simple movement. "_Say _it." He said, his smooth, heart wrenching voice like the whisper of a snake ready to strike and claim another victim. "Tell me I am the best man you have ever had. The best man you will ever have."

"I want you." She lied, the lack of warmth in her voice completely unnoticed by him. "I need you. If. . . if you were not in this world I could not possibly su. . . survive." She gasped through the steady, metronomic rhythm of his beating thrusts, her arms lying limply over his dirty, unwashed sheets as he gave another unrestrained moan. "You are. . . the most talented of all the men. . . in the world." He came a few moments afterward, pleased by her words and, the selfish lover that he was, he did not continue with the straining exertion for the sake of his partner's pleasure. Instead, he collapsed at her side, leaving the interior of her legs sticky with his warm seed, her brow plastered with a grossly excessive sweat that chilled over her forehead in the damp air. Like always, the handsome dandy pulled her into his arm forcibly, shoving her unhappy face into his chest as he did so, but Eponine would not let herself dwell in his sinful embrace for long. She felt uncomfortable after spending so many nights springing up from the Inspector's bed as soon as she liked, and his wrap felt too warm, too unconsentive, too pointless. She wanted the address so that she could leave and perhaps see Marius in happiness again.

" 'Parnasse?" Eponine said after a few moments, her rough and damaged voice stirring the dust of his filthy flat.

"What?" He groaned of her, already half asleep, one of his large hands curled in her short dark hair, twisting the chocolate strands between his fingers absentmindedly as sleep danced about his eyelids.

"The address." She said, ignoring the disgust and contemptuousness she felt as she smelt his alcohol and tobacco soaked breath drift over her neck. "Of the man you and my father were trying to rob a few weeks ago near the Cafe Musain when Javert caught you. The older one with the yellow haired girl."

"Uhh. . . ." Montparnasse began deeply, his voice gravelly and hoarse with drowsiness, bringing his sweaty, pale palm to his temple as if physically trying to sort his memories. "Can't this wait 'till later?" He said after a few seconds, letting his arm drop limply over his face before pulling her closer to his chest, like a child with a rag doll napping after a morning of exhausting play. The young man pressed his clammy face into her chest, a silent sigh escaping his lips and diffusing across her bare skin coolly, but after a quick moment, Eponine decided not to head any further to his wants.

"I'm afraid I need it now." She said, curtly, bringing a small frown to his finely molded lips as he registered her formal tone, increasingly similar to that of an officer's. Seeing that he did not take well to her words, Eponine commanded a soft, gentle smile to her face and raised her small hand to his cheek, sliding her fingers across his grimy skin and trying her best to make it look like she adored him. Just another lie, she thought to herself, forcing a false warmness into her eyes as he gazed at her, his expression annoyed and catlike as she continued to interrupt his doze. She tried imagining him as Marius, the two at least shared some physical qualities, she told herself, and it worked faintly. The affection flooding into her eyes suddenly became real, and Montparnasse huffed before sitting up and shoving her away from him.

"Somewhere on the Rue Plumet. Or something like that." He said, watching disdainfully as she began to rebind her breasts and button the fastening of her shirt, tucking the threadbare garment int her pants before re-threading her belt through the fabric loops and pulling it tightly. "Damn whore." He murmured, turning away from her and pulling the worn bedclothes over his shoulder, falling into sleeps grateful arms once again, this time without an interruption.

As soon as Eponine returned to the precinct, practically racing through the gray streets of the slums until she found herself over the telltale whitewashed steps, she burst into the living quarters she shared with Rouvette and Santiago. Finding, to her delight, that the room was empty, she collapsed before the writing desk beneath the window and pulled from its drawers a long strip of parchment, a wrinkled envelope, and a pen and bottle of ink. In her hectic thoughts, her hand shook with excitement and her writing was unsteady. Various ink blots stained the paper, but it was discernible all the same.

_Dear Marius,_

_I have been searching for those individuals you requested of me for some time, and I think, probably to your immense joy, that I have at last found them. If you are able, meet me outside of the Cafe Musain this coming Friday at noon, and I will try with all my might to lead you to the address I have obtained. I will try to find the address beforehand, to increase certainty, but I do believe my information to hold some promise._

_Wishing for your happiness,_

_With love,_

_-E_

As soon as she sealed the envelope, a genuine smile spreading across her face as she imagined Marius' joy when reading her note, Eponine jumped upon hearing a quiet knock of the open door behind her. She turned and found Javert leaning against the jamb, his look studious and haughty, his jade eyes glimmering with a look she recognized well. Suddenly, she felt her intoxicating drip of excitement at having found the girl's address ebb away as she remembered all she had done for the cost of Marius' happiness. Her flush face paled, and her lighted dark eyes dimmed considerably as she stood slowly, gripping the worn envelope in one hand and clenching the other.

"I thought you might be interested in attending me home this evening, Pont-Thenard." He said, casually, and she felt her posture grow even more rigid and precise as his gaze swept over her face, searching and watching and observing her delicate, feminine features as he always did when confronted with an interesting character.

"Of course, Inspector." Eponine said, quietly, giving him a terse nod, already anticipating the complete lack of energy she would experience at the end of the night. Without another word, he walked away, his footsteps echoing down the hallway, and she slowly sat back at the desk, laying the envelope down and folding her head in her arms. "All for him," She muttered to herself, pressing her forehead against the cool, slightly scratched surface of the desk. "All for him."


	9. Chapter 9

The moment Eponine came tumbling down the street, her policeman's uniform meticulously arranged, she saw at once that thin hints of anger still hung in the air between her and Marius like the foul smelling smoke of cheap tobacco. She skid into a stop before him, her face flushed, a lovely smile spread across her features despite his obvious coldness, and she felt the familiar sensation of her heart beginning to beat faster in her chest cavity. It was raining again, though the summer made it a fairly warm drizzle, and she tore her cap from her head to greet him, the insistent rain instantly soaking into her hair to darken it into an almost black shade. She had not had a proper haircut in some time, and the elongated tendrils fell around her face to frame it well, accentuating the roundness of her cheeks and the pink running there had given her complexion. However, Marius, in his agitation, did not notice any of this. He only saw the danger of a woman masquerading as a man, and then entire illegal traits of a woman becoming a police officer. His green eyes twisted in worry, and, noticing his concern, Eponine lost her smile, shaking her head slightly.

"I apologize for being late, Monsieur." She said, glancing away from him for a moment, her hand trailing to her pocket while she stared at her too big boots, scuffed from her run there. "There was an unprecedented arrest near the end of my shift and I. . . ." Eponine said nothing more, but he nodded all the same and she gathered the courage to look back into his breathtakingly handsome face again, her pink lips parting slightly as she began to flush even deeper, not from the summer humidity but from the look he gave her. A look of concern and worry someone would only give a dear friend. Perhaps, she dreamed to herself, if she had not been dressed as a man at that moment she may have kissed him right there in the rain and confessed all her miserable heart held for him. It was only a dream, though, she quickly reminded herself, clenching her fists. There was a reason why they were meeting on this street on this day at this time, and the reason was a pretty girl with long blond hair and eyes the color of a summer sky.

"It does not matter." Marius said, quietly, pulling his coat about him tighter, though he was not at all cold. "Do you know the address? Can you lead me there?"

Eponine said nothing, but the pink dart of her tongue flashed across her lips for a second and she jerked her head in a general direction, beckoning him to follow her as she thrust her hands in her pockets and began to walk down the street, slipping past the cafe Musain and into a side street, all the while pulling him along with her. She twisted through the snaking streets as artfully as any street urchin, having once been one herself, and, when she reached a particular street, she slowed and paused beside a wooden structure in the middle of the road, wrapping her hand around one of the two beams that supported it and turning back to look at the solemn young student watching her.

"Do you know what this is?" She asked him, her lips twitching into a bitter grin, her eyes dark and cold.

Marius took a moment to himself to observe it, his eyes drifting over the two worm eaten beams, the equally deteriorated top plank that joined them, the aged and beaten looking bell that hung just beneath, and the thin strip of rope that drifted ever so slightly in the faint, nearly nonexistent wind, like the severed ties of a broken mast drifting in a sea storm. "It's a bell of some sort. An alarm, I think." He said after quite a while, his eyebrows arching in confusion as to why she had brought this up when the action they were already doing seemed to be so much more important.

"Good." Eponine said, still smiling as she stepped onto the small platform of the structure. "Now do you know what it used to be?" Looking at it again, Marius realized that he did not know what it was, so he remained silent, tearing his gaze away from the structure to look at his strange behaving friend again, perplexed and quizzical as he wondered what on Earth she was doing. "I'll give you hint." She said loudly, calling to him though the noise of the rain, her eyes looking glassy in the feeble afternoon light. "It's pretty old. I'd say around forty years," Seeing the lack of knowing in his eyes, she shrugged simply and looked up at the bell above her, the trailing wisp of the rope falling over her shoulder weakly. Her dark eyes appeared black when she looked at him next, and they pierced Marius in a way he could not possibly explain, making the blood drain from his face as his lungs constricted in his chest. He felt almost as if she was peeling apart his body and mind to glimpse into the interior of his soul, and, beneath her gaze, his legs faltered for a moment and he almost lost his balance. "It's a guillotine." She said with a grin, stepping down from the platform and striding beside him, her hands buried deeply in her pockets like a poor man's.

Marius found, both to his relief and immense pleasure, that he did not have to follow his old friend through the winding and dirt stained streets of Paris for much longer. They only had a few more strides to take before finding themselves in the shadow of an immense wrought iron gate, separating them from an enclave that a wise man may have named Eden. Peering through the thick black bars, he saw a stone bench set just a few feet inside of the gate, and dozens of rare looking flora spread across the entirety of the garden, barely revealing what appeared to be the house of some bourgeois with curtains of fine white lace in the upper windows, suggesting that a woman with good taste lived there.

"She lives there." Eponine said, quietly, her head tilting to the gate as she stepped back from him. "Seen her myself. I'll admit, she's very pretty." She said with the soft sigh only capable of a woman in pain, her chest contracting visibly beneath her uniform as she looked up at his love stricken face. As his glorious green eyes fell before the sight of the garden, enraptured incredibly by the sheer, untouched beauty of the humanless garden, she did not think he heard her.

"Beautiful." He murmured, though whether he was correcting her examination of the girl who had won his affections or he was simply commenting on the garden, Eponine did not know.

"She usually comes out and sits at the bench later in the evening." She said, her voice still faint and masked by the sound of the rain, but his small nod as he stepped towards the locked gate assured her that she heard him, and Eponine said nothing further. She watched, pained and pensive, as her adoration withdrew what looked to be an unsealed and blank envelope from the inside of his coat and retrieved a singular stone from the swept street with gentle fingers. Reaching his thin arms through the bars, he placed the envelope over the seat of the stone bench and placed the stone over it so that the immensely important letter could not possibly be disturbed by the barely present wind.

The next few hours were spent waiting, both Marius and Eponine's backs to the wall that helped in bordering the garden of his lady as they painstakingly listened for the sound of a door opening and closing. She talked of petty things, elaborated her life as an officer, complained faintly of the attitudes of her fellow officers, and he half listened idly. The only time he really talked to her was when he began to speak of his young lady, and, though every word burned into her like a heated knife, she gained some comfort by the happiness in which he portrayed when speaking of the girl with the long blond hair. She learned from his words that he had went every day to the royal gardens with a hefty book so that he could watch her with her father under the guise of reading, that she had the most crystalline blue eyes, that she had once walked past him and the wind had caught her skirt, exposing her legs up to her garters, and he had been violently upset and concerned that another man may have seen this.

He spoke with so much affection that Eponine thought she might die.

"By the way, Eponine," He began in the middle of a detailed description of his young lady, the way he said her name making her heart give another small flutter. "I was sure that when the Inspector discovered you, you were bound for some great trouble. What on Earth did you do to keep him silent?"

"That is between the Inspector and I." She replied, gravely, her face paling into a sickly white at his words. He gave her a particularly inquisitive look and, her feet beginning to ache, Eponine let her knees bend until she sunk to the ground, slumped against the wall like a beggar. Marius sat next to her with somewhat more grace, his fresh green eyes darting up to the cloudy summer sky as if trying to imagine the blue glory beneath, and Eponine, with a sudden burst of courage born from desperation, wound her arm around his shoulders, pulling herself closer to him to rest her face against his arm. She noticed that his posture stiffened slightly, but she did not allow herself to move away from him; his scent was too intoxicating, his presence too lovely. "I'm afraid that if I told you, you would be so disgusted that you would never speak to me again." She murmured, sorrowfully, her brown eyes downcast as he turned to look at her, wanting to press but knowing that he should not lest he upset her further.

Eponine closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the stone wall, despair seeming to rack her body with an invisible pain, and she was so immersed in her anguish that she jumped slightly upon feeling something warm and smooth place itself over her bare hand. Her eyes opened in a flash to find Marius giving her a small, sympathetic smile as he rubbed her hand gently. She suddenly thought that if someone came walking down the street and saw a young man caressing a policeman's hand while the two sat awfully close on the dirty cobbled pavement. Her fears had no purpose, however; the Rue Plumet was entirely void of any humanoid life, and the house behind them was the only residence there, and they were well hidden from it.

"Don't be sad, my friend." Marius said, still smiling gently as his eyes returned again to the sky. "See," He said, pointing with his free hand at the graying expanse where a thin, barely discernible stream of light was beginning to break and creep through the clouded atmosphere. "It's stopped raining and the sun is beginning to show. Things may be bad now, but there's always a sun shining somewhere. You just need to remember that. Sadness doesn't suit you well."

Though he looked upwards, Eponine found she could take her eyes away from the sincerely innocent expression on his face, and she felt her fingers moving to entwine themselves within his, pressing her palm against his so that she could feel the gentle pulse of his heartbeat. She opened her lips, about to make a reply, when they both heard the distinctive pop of a door opening and closing, and his hand was torn away from hers as he sprang upwards, still clinging to the wall as he dared not move.

"Eponine," Marius whispered, his hands splaying themselves over the stone wall he leaned against. "Can you see if its her?" He said, so quiet she could barely hear her him through the deafening silence that hung in the air. Nodding solemnly, she stood, acutely aware of the strain of her knees and hips as she did so, and walked past the iron bars of the gate to see the blond woman Marius claimed as his beloved sitting over her bench, her beautiful hands trembling slightly as her eyes slipped over the thin parchment she clenched in her hands. What she wouldn't give for that letter, Eponine thought to herself, nodding formally at the woman when she looked up at her before stepping back towards the still concealed Marius, her stomach sinking as she saw the love washed figure he made in the street.

Feeling her eyes begin to tear up as she looked at him and not wanting him to see her cry, Eponine said in a voice hoarse with agony, "She's there."

Without another word to her, Marius gave a small jump of his feet and scampered towards the closed gate, brushing against her as he passed. She pondered whether or not she should leave or stay, and eventually resolved to stand at the mouth of the street so that she would not be able to hear their conversation. Even at this distance, however, she could still pick out the melodic tenor notes of his gentle voice, filled with a great fondness she had never heard before as he no doubt expressed his love for the beautiful woman. Clasping a hand over her stomach, Eponine closed her eyes and leaned over, like a man about to be ill, and she felt her tears begin to burn hot and salty trails over her cheeks. She gasped so terribly with her sobs that she feared her struggling lungs would collapse inside her body and she would die in that moment from heart ache, but her heart still beat, clinging feebly to that curse, life, refusing to give up as it always did.

Why did she agree to do this?, she suddenly wondered. Why, when she was so deeply in love with Marius, did she lead him to another woman? Was his happiness really worth her pain? Wrapping her arms about herself, she decided that it was, and immediately forced herself to stop crying like a child. She could only imagine how ridiculous it would be if someone were to find her, the successful subordinate of Inspector Javert, crying as she was in such a public place.

"I am the law, and the law is me." Eponine murmured to herself, closing her eyes again and willing them to discontinue their sudden epidemic of floods. "And the law cannot allow themselves to be so easily upset. I am strong." She told herself. "I am an officer. If Javert saw me like this I'd be in for a punishment."

She was still standing hunched over in the street, her hands pressed against her ears as she shook with erratic, gasping breaths, when she heard a familiar voice scrape against her ears, almost like a memory from a nightmare.

"Look who it is," Said the harsh, ugly voice, and Eponine looked up to see her father and a few of his men standing before her, all of them looking pompous and troublesome and suspicious as she viewed them. "It's my lovely little brat. How have things been treating you, 'Ponine?" He spat, and she could tell within moments that he was angry with her. Behind his shoulder, she saw Montparnasse watching her closely, his eyes of flint glinting at her as he took in her tear stained face, the deep purple circles beneath her eyes, and the uneven rise and fall of her chest as her lungs continued to contract with immense panic and sorrow. "A little funny that we run into you, sweetness." Thenardier said, grinning to show off the few remaining mangled teeth he still retained, seemingly stabbed and stuck into his red gums angrily. "We were all just wondering why in the world the bastard Inspector's still walkin' about when you've done nothin' but tag around at his side like some whore the past few months."

"I. . . ." She began, her eyes alarmed as she noted the heavy glower over each man's face as they looked at her, starving dogs who had just cornered a particularly appetizing cat. "I've tried." Eponine said, attempting to appease the demons spread out before her. "I put poison into his wine, but nothing happened." She said, hastily formulating her lie as well as she could under their pressing glares. "He's impenetrable." She murmured, trying with all her might to omit the barely perceptible tremor in her voice as she took a step backwards, as if going to make a run from them. To her relief, their anger seemed to ebb slightly and Eponine allowed herself to exhale a large breath she did not know she had been holding.

"You better be telling the truth, stupid slut, or you're in for some beatings." Thenardier growled quietly at her, and a few stumbling words left her mouth in assurance that she was being entirely honest. "Now," He began. "So long as you're here, you can help us with a small fix." Her father's upper lip curved upwards, displaying again the few shards of his blackened and stained teeth, and Eponine felt herself grimace.

"And what kind of fix might this be?" She asked with as much ease as she could force into her voice, crossing her arms over her chest and rocking back and forth on the heels of her feet. Out of her peripheral vision, Eponine saw Montparnasse lean close to another one of the crooks and whisper something in his ear, his dark, soulless eyes focused on her with a small smirk, and the other man snickered in response. Her eyes darting back to her father, she tried her best to ignore the handsome dandy and instead pointed her line of vision directly into her father's narrow, beastly eyes.

"Remember that bloke we tried to jump a while back? The one you and the Inspector got in the way of?" Said Thenardier, and Eponine shifted her feet in the cobbled street before giving a terse nod, her face paling softly as she registered the faint hint of Marius' sweet voice somewhere in the distance. "'Parnasse here got the idea of dropping in on him for a bit of a visit, since we all knows his address. Thought it might benefit our pockets if we did." Her father's words came out in a raspy, amused hiss, like the snake of sin feeding lies into Eve's ear, and Eponine paled further as he continued to speak. "We need a bit of help."

"You can't rob this house." She stated firmly, moving her feet apart so that she stood directly in the mouth of the street, blocking them completely from entrance. Her hand began to tremble, but she reminded herself of the young man standing somewhere close by, probably concealed within the utopia os his beloved's garden and exchanging sweet words of love. With Marius' image in her head, she dispelled any fear of the Patron-Minette she had and stood more confidently, raising her chin as she looked at the assembly of murderers, cons, and previous beggars through narrowed and haughty eyes.

"What'd she say?" Thenardier murmured to his comrades, his gray lips curving into a deep, ugly frown, accentuating the patchy growths of frayed hair over his chin where he had not bothered to shave.

"Said we can't rob the house." Montparnasse said in an obnoxiously loud tone, smiling at her broadly as his eyes shot freshly sharpened daggers at her. The memory of his hands over her throat as he thrust his conceited self into her ripped through Eponine's mind and she found herself openly sneering at him, a worthy model of her superior officer as she felt herself begin to burn hotly under his gaze. Sensing her infinitely deep detestment, his pink tongue slipped between the tip of his white teeth and his sensual gaze darkened considerably, his lust for her matching her loathing for him.

"I've had enough of your damn games, you stupid-"

"You take one step towards this house and I scream." She threatened them, her still present sneer making the men of the Patron-Minette grow wilier with anger. Within moments they all seemed to move as one, reaching into the pockets of their worn coats and the bands of their scrapped and warped leather belts to withdraw rusted knives and artfully made weapons. "And before you try to pull anything else, you better know that the Inspector's just down the street having a chat with the man you're about to rob. I don't think he'll take too kindly to you messing with his subordinate." She further warned them sharply with another heavy lie, baring her teeth at them like some small wolf and placing her own hand at the line of her waist. She didn't have a firearm because she hadn't completed training yet, but the mostly thickheaded criminals before her wouldn't know that. A few of the cons began to look concerned for their own health, shifting uneasily as they eyed her waist-level hand, and Eponine laughed internally at their hamartial cowardice.

"As soon as I get my hands on you, you fucking hussy, I'm going to throttle you so hard you'll never get the bruises off!" Her father shouted at her.

"One more step!" Eponine shouted back, her dark hair falling over her widened eyes as she clenched her fists stubbornly at her sides, her toes subconsciously curling in her too big boots. "One more step and I scream and the Inspector and I take all of you bastards in!"

"And I tell your dear Inspector everything." Montparnasse said, dangerously, stepping out of the group of men and shoving past her father roughly to stand in front of her, his glowering eyes just inches away from her own. "And I'm sure," He muttered, maliciously. "That he'd be quite willing to let us share a cell." The smell of cherry tobacco hung heavy on his moist breath, and she felt it fan over her face sickeningly as he leered into her closer and closer, his presence almost suffocating as she became conscious of the sound of blood pounding massively in her ears. "Just think of all the things I could to you in the dark, and this time there would be no one to help you. No one would even give a damn about some stupid bitch who cut her hair so she could play officer, even if she was screaming her bloody lungs out for mercy."

Eponine gave the young man one more defiant glare before screaming promptly in his face, the noise sounding high and strained in a throat so accustomed to mimicking a man's voice, and Montparnasse replied by striking her squarely in the face, shouting some obscenity as he did so. The criminals before her scattered as she cradled her injured cheek, and it seemed that the handsome cutthroat was about to hit her again when Thenardier sprang forward and pulled him away from her, shouting at him in words she could not understand. Both men gave her one last angry look before hurrying off in he direction they came from, looking around warily for the unrepresented Inspector, her father shouting something at her that sounded vaguely like a promise of pain. Beginning to shake faintly in the warm air, a small noise left Eponine's lips, half sigh and half sob, and she turned and wandered back to the iron wrought gate, her body and mind feeling numb, as if the entire afternoon had been a dream. She found, to her expectations, Marius slipping through the open bars and back into the street where he passed her with a curt nod and a faint thanks, though he did not seem to register that she had been the one to scream just a few moments earlier. She turned and watched him retreat back down the street in the direction of the Cafe Musain where they had come from. Becoming acutely aware of the throbbing of her face, Eponine was about to leave when she became aware of an older man's voice coming from within the garden, accompanied by a high soprano that she took as the young lady's.

"Good God, Cosette, how many times have I told you not to come out here so late in the evening?" The man's voice said, sounding more frightened than angry as his words cut through the summer evening air. "Was that your cry I heard? What on earth happened?" There was a slight pause, and Eponine assumed the girl to have given a faint nod before speaking.

"I-I was scared, Papa." The young lady, who she assumed was Cosette, said, her voice high and faint and pretty sounding despite its eminent fluster. "I saw some men in the street, and I didn't know what to do."

Eponine, relaxing her posture into a more comfortable state and stepping out from her hiding place against the wall, strolled in front of the gate so that she could view the conversation with a visual eye. An older man, his hair gray and the skin around his eyes wrinkled with concern, turned to look at her, obviously startled, and the young woman she had seen earlier followed his suit. Her eyes glimmered like sapphires in the darkness that had begun to settle over the street, and her long flaxen hair was perfectly curled and arranged over her gently sloping shoulder. She could see at once why Marius found her so beautiful, and the pretty sight of her at once made her heart begin to pound harder and her lungs begin to seize up. The sight of Cosette unhinged her so completely that she struggled for a few prolonged moments before gathering enough thought to make her heavy tongue move in her mouth and produce audible speech.

"There is nothing to be alarmed about, Monsieur." She assured them both, giving a small, polite nod before folding her arms behind her back like Javert often did when speaking with a civilian. "The young lady probably saw my superior officer and I passing through the street." She looked at them, her eyes narrowing imperceptibly for a fraction of a second, and added thoughtfully, "But if you should see any suspicious individuals about, do not hesitate from reporting them. Inquire for either Officer Pont-Thenard or Inspector Javert, and I will be sure to assist you both." Eponine gave them another polite nod, exchanged a few simple words with the older man, and then stepped back into the shadows with Marius, though the pair stayed where they were in the garden.

"Come, Cosette." The man said, gruffly, his voice quiet and cautious in the night air. Eponine could just imagine the man looking around suspiciously while he spoke, perhaps placing an arm over his daughter's shoulder in the insetting darkness. "Pack your things." He told her, his voice solid and commanding in the cooling air.

"What?" The girl asked, sounding surprised and startled and slightly resistant. "Why?"

"We are leaving in the morning." The man said in a hushed tone, and Eponine felt a great surge of happiness ignite in her, like an oil fueled flame in the miserable darkness of her being. Listening more closely, she inclined her head against the wall she was hiding against and drummed her fingers silently against the stone. Thinking of how Marius would react to this information, however, she felt a deep pit of guilt form in her chest while imagining his woeful demeanor.

"Leaving?" The daughter asked, sounding increasingly alarmed. Through the faint wind Eponine could discern the sound of heavy footsteps over grass, the sound of an agitated man walking back into his home, and she jumped at the level of hysteria in the girl's voice when she next spoke. "Where are we leaving? Papa, I don't want to leave!"

"Nonsense." The father said, his voice sounding more distant now, as if he was standing before the doorway of the quaint and secluded house. "Tonight we are going to the Rue de l'Homme-Arme, and then we are going to England as soon as possible. You'll like it there, my dear, I promise. Now come inside and pack your things, and fetch Toussaint."

Eponine saw at once that the girl was not one to disobey her father, and she looked down a the cobbled pavement while listening to the small sounds of her soft, retreating footsteps and the familiar noise of a door opening and closing. She waited there against the wall for a while longer, thinking of what the girl's absence might mean for her and Marius, and she felt herself grin in the now deepening darkness of the coming night. He was, at least for a while longer, hers again, and she could not have been more pleased that the father had expelled the pretty little ingenue from her adoration's life. Eponine's grin quickly vanished, however, when she heard the open and close of the door again a few minutes later, and the girl appeared at the gate again.

"Marius?" She called in a faint whisper, the catch of tears evident in her voice as she spoke. Eponine was going to remain where she was, hidden from the girl's sight, but when she saw her pale hands reach through the iron bars and heard a heart rending sob, she allowed herself to step from the shadows, looking at the girl with great pity as she did so.

"Not Marius, but I know him." She told the distressed beauty quietly, letting her hand drift to the back of her head while observing the girl's long blond hair.

"Please, Monsieur, you must take this to him at once. I beg you." The young lady said, her face visibly tear stained in the fading light as she thrust her arm between two of the bars and handed her a crumpled envelope, equally as tear stained. Eponine felt another twinge of guilt for the girl's heart ache, having experienced it so greatly many times before, but when she reminded herself that her own pleasure would come at this fine girl's misfortune the feeling went away. Some other man would come and claim her in time, she told herself. The many suitors of England could not possibly contain themselves at seeing such a beautiful woman, and the poor, curly haired student she had invited into her garden and into her heart would soon be forgotten, replaced by another beau to amuse her.

"I will take it to him." Eponine promised her falsely, clutching the thin collection of parchment to her chest before giving the girl another Javert worthy nod and disappearing back down the street under the pretense to deliver her letter.

She thought for a moment of actually giving the exceedingly important letter to him, but if she did give it to him, Eponine told herself, what he read might further interfere with their relationship. He might go to the father and beg for his daughter's hand at once and then whisk the young beauty away to the life of happiness that was supposed to be hers, and that could simply not be allowed. She had loved Marius first, and she had loved him much more and for much longer, and, maybe if he became aware of her affections, he would begin to return her ever present love for him. She had been battered, beaten, abused, and forced to pose as a man, all for him, and she deserved the handsome young baron much more than some petty lark that had only just made his acquaintance. Scowling darkly to herself in the night air, Eponine shoved the girl's explanatory letter into the inside of her jacket.

Marius was hers, and if some stupid girl in a pretty garden tried to steal him away from her, she'd soon find the feat too hard to perform.


	10. Chapter 10

Eponine stared at the glossy reflection of herself in the window of Javert's bed chamber, her fingers softly tracing the outline of the bruise Montparnasse had left over her cheek as she observed the purple mass with a weary expression. It matched almost perfectly the ever darkening circles beneath her eyes and seemed to creep along the side of her face to whisper its way across the side of her eye, and she knew people would be eying it curiously for days. She was, she thought to herself numbly, no longer Eponine Thenardier. She had officially abandoned all kinly ties towards her family and the Patron-Minette, and the bruise on her face was the wax seal over her letter of resignation from them all. Straightening her back to stand, she began to think that perhaps she should have felt more for the people who she had once had fond feelings for, but she felt nothing but a creeping guilt concerning Azelma and Marius. She had not given her sister a single farewell, and, by protecting Marius momentarily from the Patron-Minette as he courted the girl with the long blond hair, she had inadvertently increased his risk of harm from her father's gang.

She would have to start keeping a closer eye on him for his own good, even if he didn't want her around, Eponine told herself tiredly, feeling the strain of the past day wearing over her like a granite slab over a quarry man's shoulders. Hearing the click of a door behind her, she jumped and turned to see Javert leaning in a familiar position against the jamb, looking surly and inquisitive as he eyed the mishapen splotch diffused over her skin, and her eyes darted from his questioning ones momentarily as she wrapped her arms around herself in their uncomfortable silence. He said nothing for a long while, but she could feel his jade eyes burning into her face as she stepped towards him, expecting him to guide her to his bed as he usually did in similar circumstances. She was surprised, therefore, when she felt his hand, cool and ungloved, place itself over her face where Montparnasse had stricken her, covering the sickly looking bruise from his piercing sight with his palm as his fingers twisted into the trailing tendrils of her dark hair, lifting up her face to his so that she could see the way his pale green depths slipped over her features.

"You must have been very beautiful as a woman." He said, eventually, tilting her chin upwards more so that he could peer into her brown eyes properly, his face unreadable as she searched him for some breed of emotion. To her discomfort she found none, and she tried not to notice the lack of feeling in his stony expression.

His words came as a bit of a shock to her, and she struggled for a few moments while trying to find her voice before saying in an overly casual tone, "Quite the contrary, Monsieur." Eponine made a slight attempt at a smile before removing his hand from her face and walking to the bedside with her back turned to him. "I'm afraid being a man suits me much more than being a woman." With distant hands, she fingered the fastenings of her belt, but it was an empty gesture. She was too exhausted to feel any strain of desire at the moment, and she had only returned here after her disastrous meeting with the Patron-Minette because she did not want to return to her bunks and have Rouvette pester her for a good while. Even if she received less sleep, the Inspector seemed to be the far better option at the moment, and his home had been much closer to the Rue Plumet than the precinct was.

"What happened?" He asked, and, though she could not see his face, she knew he meant the bruise covering her own.

Shifting her stance slightly, Eponine rocked back on her heels before looking up at him and shrugging. "It was a gift from an old friend." She said, a bitter grin adding to the ugliness of her injury momentarily while he continued to victimize her with his glacial stare. He crossed the room in three quick paces, and she quickly found his hands wrapped around the thinness of her shoulders, holding her tight enough to make it impossible for her to escape him, but not tight enough to cause her pain. The closeness of him was sudden and foreboding and, attempting to abandon her slight agitation, she traced her hands over the expanse of his chest and down to his legs, expecting this to be what he wanted, but the sharpening of his eyes proved otherwise. The heavy smells of salt and rain clung to his person and overwhelmed her, though she did not find his scent entirely unpleasant. She registered somewhat faintly that the choking smell of tobacco that covered most men was absent, and the change comforted her in some way she could not describe.

"Did anyone find out?" The Inspector said, his voice quiet enough to induce a deep, nebulous fear within her. Giving a slight shiver, Eponine turned away from him and walked back to the side of the window, peering not into her reflection this time but into the murky skies visible from its thin panels.

"No." She said, her voice unexpectedly cold as she wrapped her arms around herself. Her eyes closed wearily, and she felt the immense weight of her lids droop down before she sat down at his desk, letting her head rest over the cool mahogany surface as she felt a familiar spinning begin to whirl around in her head. She tried to remember the last time she had eaten, but her memory failed her. She did not, however, feel the panging of hunger in her stomach as she often had before becoming an officer, but merely experienced its symptoms. Her dizziness was enough to make her clench her jaw and tighten her fists, and Eponine began to become aware of a slight tremor in her arm.

In her pocket, Cosette's letter seemed to burn against her skin, and she frowned as she felt the Inspector walk up behind her.

"Did anyone find out about this?" Eponine heard him ask, and she immediately felt her eyes tighten with anger as her head snapped back to look at him. His entire demeanor was rigid and bound with suspicion, suspicion being the only form of concern he seemed to be capable of portraying, and she felt the urge to strike him just as hard as Montparnasse had hit her that evening.

"No." She barked strongly, her core seeming to burn as he glared at her insubordinate way of speaking to him. "Nobody found out about _this, _Monsieur_._" Eponine said sharply, standing from her seat and turning to face him quickly enough to knock the chair down. Because she knew it would annoy him, she did not bother to pick it up and left the wooden mass laying against the floor."Do not think me exempt from the social consequences this may have on us if someone were to be informed. You may be shamed, but I would be shunned."

Javert looked at her again, his jade eyes stormy as he calculated her thoughts and actions, and said in a voice empty of anything but uniform sound, "Who hit you?"

"Why does it matter?" Eponine laughed, but he could perceive no amusement in her voice. Only a stinging bitterness that seemed to tinge the air between them. "Hundreds of women are hit each day in Paris alone. Why should I, out of all the dozens, matter an inkling?" Flustered, she shoved past him roughly and collapsed back over his bed, sighing inadvertently as she felt fully the ache of her back and the soreness of her heart. "Are you going to toss me about in your sheets tonight? Because if not, I have better things to do than be interrogated until dawn." Closing her eyes, she curled herself over his bed, resting her head against her thin arms, and began again to feel the utter exhaustion the day had had on her body and mind, but the Inspector would not give up his questions so easily, much to her chagrin.

"Was it that student?" Javert questioned her, and she felt his voice grow increasingly near her, though she did not sense the vibrations of his footsteps over the floorboards as she did with all other men. "That. . . what was his name. . . Marius?"

"No." She said, drowsily, her mind ebbing slowly into oblivion as sleep began to wrap its blessed tendrils around her. "Monsieur Marius is not that kind of man. He would never raise a hand to anyone, not even me." The endless affection in her voice did not go unmissed by him, and Javert's subtle interest grew into genuine curiosity as he crouched down and observed his subordinate at eye level, taking note at once of the way the bruise melted into the skin of her face, creeping along her cheekbone in what looked like a considerably painful injury. A heavy exhale left Javert's throat as she sensed him stand and, when next Eponine opened her eyes, he had gone from the room. She sat up, confused until he reentered the room a few moments later with a bottle and a handkerchief and knelt by her side again, his expression looking like that of an annoyed parent tending to a constantly attention seeking child as he uncorked the black glass container.

"This Monsieur Marius," He said, quietly, dumping a portion of the bottle's contents onto the linen square before raising it to her face. The liquid, whatever it was, had a strong, sharp smell that could not be masked by the overwhelming scent of mint that somebody had attempted to mask the alcohol with. "Is he your lover?" When the medicinal substance came within contact of her flesh, it seemed to burn as hotly as fire over her skin before dulling the pain into a warm numbness, and Eponine flinched and tensed as it seemed to eat away at her skin before its desired effect of pain relief. When he had finished his duty, the Inspector corked the bottle again and abandoned both it and the handkerchief, watching with pensive eyes as she slowly shook her head in a regretful and despair filled denial. "But you care for him?"

"More than I care for the stars." She murmured, and she watched tiredly as his eyes dropped down to the sight of her knees inexplicably, their cryptic green depths glimmering strangely in the dim light. "But he would never ponder romantic notions towards me for a moment. I honestly think. . . ." Eponine trailed off, but he muttered a faint continue for her to speak, and she did as he said. "I honestly think he is too innocent to entertain those kinds of thoughts towards me. But for someone else, someone prettier, sweeter, gentler, someone more innocent. He falls in love within moments, and I am left devastated."

"It is the nature of innocents to cling to one another." He said, lacing his fingers through each other and staring at his folded hands, his sight still refusing to meet hers.

"And what does that mean for us, Monsieur?" She said, flashing him another one of her cold grins as soon as he looked up at her again. As soon as she registered the intensity of his gaze, however, Eponine's face matched his serious expression and she felt her fingers curl and tighten into the coarse bed clothes beneath her hands. She anticipated somewhere within her what his flinty stare meant to her, and Eponine felt her chin tilt upwards and her eyes close, driven by some unknown force as she clamped the covers in her cold palms, waiting for him to initiate what she knew would come next. A few silent moments stretched into what felt like years, the sound of her nervous breaths drifting to his ears the only sound detectable. Their lips touched and lingered in the dark, his surprisingly gentle as she slowly raised her hands from her sides to place them over his shoulders lightly, their warm breath mingling and mixing in what felt like a purposeful concoction. She remained tense for several moments, thinking of her beloved, and then leaned into his presence, her lips parting and emitting a small sigh as she did so. She was surprised to find his lips so soft and undemanding, so unlike his usual self, and she felt her heart begin to beat in her chest at a rate only Marius before had induced.

Javert did not press her down to the expanse of his bed as he usually did, but instead guided her with ease into a laying position where he carefully arranged himself over her so that she would not feel his weight. If she had had the sense to think in the moment, she would have realized as he carefully unbuttoned the front of her shirt that nothing of what they were doing would be considered the norm for them. Something between them had changed, shifted into something else, but she could neither name it or the time it had changed. As he opened the expanse of her shirt, he pulled with nimble fingers at the cotton lengths tied around her chest. Th linen fell away with ease and, at the sight of her breasts, Javert exhaled loudly, making Eponine tense faintly beneath him as he stared at her unclothed body. It was not in their regular schedule to disrobe, and she would not deny that she felt incredibly uncomfortable under another's sight, but when he glanced upwards into her eyes, as if asking permission to touch her, she gave a tentative nod of consent. His hands, she noticed at once, were ungloved and, like his lips, they were surprisingly warm as he ran them around the swellings of her chest, kneading and lightly squeezing her flesh. The brush of her sleeve over his seemed to fill the entire room as she moved her arms around his neck, pulling him closer to her and reuniting their lips timidly.

Javert's hand strayed momentarily over her stomach where he could feel the discernible definition of her abdominal muscles, and then she felt his finger tips stray down to the hem of her pants. She could feel his intense eyes on her as his touch wound itself against her hot sex, analyzing her reaction as his fingers probed into her dampening folds, making her gasp and tense again. At the stimulation of his hand working against her womanhood, slipping along the interior of her walls and over her clit, she began to make small exclamations of slang he was almost certain were swear words. Her voice, sounding high and airy and filled with desire, made him become aware of his own steadily growing arousal, and, when it became known to her as well, his stiffened member pressing against her leg hotly, Eponine's hand slapped against the front of his trousers, roughly caressing him into an agonizing state through the course fabric of his uniform.

"I need. . . ." She murmured, and then, suddenly thinking of Marius, did not have the will to finish. He could read her perfectly, however, and Javert followed her doubtful commands like a good Christian man followed his commandments, his chest rising and falling with silent gasps as her hand lingered over his clothed member.

Within moments, the Inspector had unbuttoned the fastenings of both of their trousers and slowly eased himself into her, and when he forced his eyes to focus and study her face, he found her cheeks flushed and her eyebrows bent inwards. She was wetter than his hands had first foretold, and a soft breath escaped Javert's lips as he registered the pulsing of her walls, which held him tight in their depths like the sheath of a dagger, hot and engulfing. The strange and abnormal gentility he first bestowed upon her felt entirely alien, but Eponine reveled in it all the same, and as soon as he began to move within her she steadily matched his motion. His lips brushed against hers again, and this time she did not hesitate before kissing him. Her tongue immersed itself in his mouth, exploring the sensation eagerly as he pressed himself more fully inside of her, his body feeling even thicker and swollen than it had the first time she had subdued him into this action. As his movements began to quicken in frequency and grow in pressure, a few silken sounds leaked from her throat into his mouth in muffled moans and his hands, which were now splayed over her chest, moved to her hips to steady her body as he continued to thrust into her.

A loud exclamation escaped her mouth as Eponine tore her lips away from his, and she found herself lifting her back up from the surface of his bed, clinging to his chest desperately as she felt herself begin to contract around his swollen member almost painfully. Her fingers wrapped themselves in the red strands of his hair again, adding to his own building slate of lust, and when she felt his lips press against her neck, Eponine finally broke. As her heat spasmed around his sex for what seemed like an endless amount of time, she threw her head of short chocolate hair back into the air and was silent in the aftermath of her finish, her hands still wrapped around the slick skin of his neck. She felt so completely numb and distant that, by the time her head cleared and her vision stopped spinning, Javert was laying beside her, his chest moving as equally hard as hers as the lucrative effects of pleasure still lingered over his body.

And then, for no explainable reason, Eponine felt tears begin to well in her eyes, and her face seemed to burn hotly as their salty concentration slipped over her cheeks. She sobbed loudly, ashamed to cry in front of such a stoic man but unable to stop, and Javert watched her, mild shock visible on his face. Sitting up slightly, he continued to watch her in silence as she curled her fingers into her hands and brought her palms over her eyes, her body shaking and quivering with the force of her sobs. He tried to feel satisfied with himself, her tears were what he wanted after all, but the feeling would not come. If anything, he felt the dull knife of guilt stab him somewhere in the gut as she continued to cry. Emotion was always something strange to him, and tears were the most aberrant of all things. He could not remember shedding a single tear once in his life, and whenever he saw another human committing the act he was overwhelmed by a deep sense of awkwardness. Even now, as his subordinate lay in his bed, half naked, shaking uncontrollably, he did not know how to console her. So, with stiff arms, he pulled her into an uncomfortable embrace, and when she did not resist him, he pressed her wet face into the chest of his uniform, his hand slowly running the brown strands of her hair through his fingers. Eventually, she began to quiet, and, save a random quiver every few minutes, Eponine stilled and fell asleep for the second time in his presence.

* * *

Eponine woke the next morning, the dull ache of her face having returned with an even greater force, accompanied by the soreness of her back and stomach sleeping with a man always left her with. Raising her heavy lids, she found Javert still beside her, sitting upwards and leaning against the oaken headboard above her head, one leg straight against the bed and the other bent and being used as the desk for some Moleskin notebook. His jade eyes watched her intently, and, as her eyes sought out the notebook clutched in one hand and the minute looking charcoal pencil held in the other, her vision narrowed in interest.

"What is that?" Eponine asked him, her voice gravelly and rough.

His eyes glanced away from hers and hesitated for a moment, and then Javert angled the small notebook so that she could see the interior of its pages. She was astonished to find a masterfully sketched image of what appeared to be a young man deeply asleep, his hands curled by his pale face, his short dark hair messy and unkempt. To her fascination, it seemed that the picture had refused to omit a single detail of her appearance, even ones she had never bothered to notice herself. The lengths of her eyelashes and the way they cast small shadows over her cheeks seemed to have had a special attention paid to them, as well as the slope of her nose and the exact shape of her lips. If he had not comforted her so willingly as she had sobbed the night before, Eponine may have found the notion that the Inspector had drawn her in her sleep faintly disturbing, but she felt not a qualm as she considered the portrait thoughtfully.

"You drew that?" She asked him, and he gave a curt nod, running the charcoal pencil through his large hand as her dark eyes looked up at him curiously.

"I draw the faces for wanted posters." He admitted, eventually, his own eyes looking at the drawing of her, though he was not really looking at it. "Once I see a face, I never forget it. I suppose that's one of the things that makes me such a good officer."

"Mmm." She hummed quietly, her eyes returning to the picture as he began to dab the image with the tip of his pencil again, adding and changing minor things here and there, never glancing at her for reference. Neither of them said anything more, and, as she continued to watch him move his tool artfully across the thick paper of the notebook, Eponine realized how little she really knew about the man she had spent so many nights with, and she supposed that she ought to feel alarmed or at least ashamed about this. She also realized, with a start, that neither of them even knew the other's given name. She knew him simply as Inspector Javert, and she had no reason to believe he knew who she was. She had never given him her name, and she did not know where else he would obtain it. But, all the same, Eponine felt her cold feelings towards him begin to thaw slightly. In her eyes, Javert was no longer just a man who used her body for his own gain and who sneered at beggars. He was also a man who tended to his subordinate's wounds and held her while she cried and had the artistry of a master. Faintly, she wondered what other jewels were hidden beneath the coal of the Inspector's glacial exterior, if the things she had most recently discovered about him weren't fool's gold, that was.

"What is that around your neck?" He asked her after a long time spent in silence, his eyes bent and focused on the small pendant around her neck.

"This thing?" Eponine muttered, looking down at her still bare chest and fingering the flimsy oval strung around her throat thoughtfully, running the pads of her fingers over the small metal carving over the face. "Just some little piece I stole off a bloke while he was sleeping. Thought it might be worth a small sum, but it wasn't so I just kept it." At her words, he made a disapproving face before turning away from her, his lips curving into a small sneer that she knew quite well. At his disgust, she frowned and gave him a rough punch over his arm, her pink lips curving into a smirk when he scowled at her. "Don't act so high and mighty." Eponine told him, sitting up and curling her hand around his arm. "He deserved it."

"Did he now?" Javert said, boredly, returning to his sketch and attempting to ignore her, though he found she would not be disbanded so easily.

"Yes, Monsieur. He did." Eponine paused, turning closer to him so that she could place her relatively small hand over his stomach, scrunching the fabric of his shirt front into her fingers absentmindedly in an attempt to annoy him."Would you like to know why he deserved it?" She asked him, her tone casual, like a dim lady commenting on the weather to a mostly silent husband.

"Not particularly." He said, roughly, giving her another thick glare before inching away from her persistent touch. To his disdain, however, she continued to move closer to him until the unmarred side of her face was pressed against his chest. Giving a rough sigh, he looked down at her and said nothing, though his eyes seemed to grudgingly consent to whatever tale she wanted to tell him. Glancing down, he saw her unclothed endowments in full light and wondered what had happened to her modesty- if she had ever had any to begin. He could offer no objection to her lack of shame, though, as a few moments later he felt his hand raise itself to drift his fingers over the smooth skin of her chest, sliding over the side of one breast as she began her story.

"Well," She said, her coquettish eyes saying nothing as he pressed his warm palms over her flesh, a soft sigh escaping his lips as he felt her small nipples pucker beneath his hands. "Quite a few years ago, there was some militia regiment stationed here for several weeks, and their quarters were above this tavern not far from where I used to live." Eponine paused, remembering the squalor in which she had lived at the time, and decided to leave that part of her life in shadow in his eyes. "Every night I went into this tavern, and there was always a man outside with a few others, smoking cigarettes and telling jokes. Stuff like that. And he would always smile at me. And then one night, he followed me right inside, sat across from me at a table, and he kept buying me drink after drink." Sensing his jade eyes on her face, watching her closely as he began to take interest in her words, she stopped and smiled up at him, though it was nothing short of weary. "I remember how handsome I thought he looked in his uniform, all prim and proper he seemed. Now I can't even remember what his face looked like. But you can probably guess what happened next. "

"He bedded you?" The Inspector asked quietly, turning on his side to look at her more directly. For a moment, Eponine found herself caught off guard by the immense attention his pale green eyes payed her, narrowed in concentration beneath his thick eyebrows, and it was a few long moments before she gave him a terse nod in reply. Glancing down, her cheeks colored slightly as her next sentence left her mouth.

"When he woke up in the morning, I was already awake, and I begged him to take him with me when his regiment left. I was so young then, barely more than a child, and I really believed he would. Imagine my surprise when he laughed in my face." She looked away from him, a bitter stare coursing through her eyes as she ran her fingers over the finely carved buttons of his shirt. "He tried to shove a few coins in my hands, like I was some common prostitute, but I wouldn't take it. He took the money back and fell back asleep within moments, and I saw the necklace 'round his neck. I took it while he was sleeping and tried to sell it, but it was worth practically nothing. So I've had it since then. Joan of Arc, it says on the back. Always liked her, I did."

"She's the patron saint of police officers, you know." He said after a moment, his hands resting against her chest after coming to a slow stop during her tale. His fingers moved gently, fiddling with the pendant on her neck so that he could clearly see the woman on horseback carved onto the face of the oval.

"She's also the patron saint of women in distress." Eponine said in a rough whisper, her eyes looking even darker than they had before as he observed again the bruise covering her cheek, staining her pale skin grossly. "She died when she was my age. Just nine and ten years. It's so strange to think that a single woman led several battles and had a hand in saving France from the English in just nineteen years."

"A truly admirable woman." Javert said, running his hand through her short brown hair as his eyes stood ground over her face. For a startling moment, he did not know whether he meant the famous woman burned at the stake for a false accusation, or the wiry girl in front of him who had proven her strength to him numerous times. He decided in the end that he meant the former, his mind ebbing with thoughts of respect at the notion of the noble woman savior of France.

Eponine gave another tired sigh before fluttering her eyes shut again, her arms wrapping around his neck limply as she did so. She was sinking into sleep again, though she was sure that the day would soon reach noon, when she felt his lips press themselves against her forehead.

"You know, Monsieur," She started, her eyes still closed and the corners of her lips twitching upwards in the ghost of a grin. "You may not have the satisfaction of being the first man I have slept with, but you may be pleased to know that you are the first man to have claimed my lips." It was true. Montparnasse, in his boyish years, had never liked the thought of kissing when he knew there were other things he would much rather do with a woman, and after she had met Marius, she had decided to preserve that one untouched part of herself for his sweet being. It seemed her plans had gone in the same direction as her ill protected chastity, however. The Inspector had now deemed her unworthy of even Marius' lips, but she was not as upset as she would have previously expected herself to be. If it pleased the Inspector to take her lips in his own, then she would not deny him as long as the lovely young man's safety lay in potential danger.

Javert seemed to ponder this newly acquired information for a moment, turning it over in his head like a strange, newly found stone, and then said in a voice leaking with a familiar curiosity, "How many men have you slept with?"

Her thin eyebrows bent in a deep scowl, her eyes still refusing to open, and for a few short seconds Javert thought that Eponine might suddenly be angry, but she only laughed.

"Want to know how many men you've crossed territories with, do you?" She asked him, the trilling sound of her laugh echoing off of the ceiling of the room and back down to his ears. She looked at him, pointedly waiting for a confirmation, and, when he said nothing, simply staring at her still laughing form in silence, she seemed to take his stony look as her affirmation. "Including you and the man I've just told you about. . . ." She paused, as if for emphasis, grinning at his serious expression. "Three."

"And who is this third man?" The Inspector asked, and she watched with amused eyes as his eyes narrowed, not in irritation but in discomfort at the joy she got from their discussion.

"The same one who gave me this." Eponine said with another grin, her dark eyes sparkling almost madly as she pointed with her little finger at the bruise that circled from her cheekbone to the side of her eye, looking dark and painful after being given time to suppurate. Suppurated into a state of wretched torment, just like her existence.


	11. Chapter 11

**Updating now because I won't be able to tomorrow. Enjoy, and please review.**

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Eponine sat across from the Inspector in his office, watching blankly as small streams of water dripped down the crystalline window panes behind him. She sat rather unceremoniously, her legs splayed out over the empty seat next to her, her arms bent behind her head, and her lack of attention towards the pile of documents before her was not unnoticed by Javert. Stealing quick glances at her so that she would not notice his attentions, he felt a familiar prick of irritation, though the feeling now only made him want to laugh. But the Inspector was not known to laugh, so he did not. He merely shook his head to himself in a slight twitch and let out a soft exhale of breath as she continued to stare emptily at the beads of water gathering over the glossy windows, completely oblivious to his actions.

Though faintly annoyed, Javert would say nothing, because he knew very well that his subordinate was somewhere far away from his damp office, probably in some flat or side street with a young man with a stack of books under his arm. Anything he would say would simply go ignored when the thoughts of another man were there to occupy her mind. His wrist cramping, the Inspector paused, letting his writing hand still for a moment, an looked openly at his subordinate. The horrendous bruise her old friend had given her had, if anything, colored even worse in the past few days, turning various shades of yellow, brown, and violet. It seemed to have even spread slightly, even with his efforts to treat it with various medicines, the mash of ugly colors mixing and wrapping itself around he jaw line to the side of her dark eyes.

Eponine, preoccupied with her own thoughts, jumped when she felt him place his hand over hers as he began to write again. Squinting her eyes, she tried to read what he was writing, but her eyes would not focus enough to do so. Instead, she looked back up at him, her eyes still glassy as she examined his emotionless expression and marveled at the cool hand placed over hers.

"Here?" She murmured to him, quietly. Javert's eyes slid up from his work to stare at her, looking as surprised as he could possibly look with a small crease forming between his eyebrows. A catty little smile marked her lips, though there was faint uncertainty behind the small gesture, and he could easily see the discomfort in her eyes, as if she was cringing internally. Solemnly, he looked back down at the papers in front of him and gave a small shake of his head. He felt her person shift, perhaps into a more formal sitting position, but he neither glanced up or removed his hand from hers. Through his peripheral vision, he saw her rest the undamaged side of her face against his desk, her eyes closing tiredly.

"Perhaps," He began, his voice lacking any real volume as he paused here and there, still writing. "You should go to your quarters and rest for a while. You're not working, anyways."

"I've already finished is why." Eponine replied, a hint of a yawn creeping into her voice as she spoke. "Finished last night. Couldn't sleep so I just decided to work."

"All the more reason why you should rest, then." Was all Javert said, though he did nothing when he sensed her drift into sleep still slumped over his desk. When he was absolutely positive she was deep in a slumber, his eyes drifted up from his work again to look at the bruise plastered over her thin skin. With his hand over hers he could feel the steady pulse of her heart, like the gentle drip of water from a gutter after it had stopped raining, and he found himself mesmerized for a short while by the iambic rhythm, gentle and human. It seemed soothing somehow, almost familiar, like something he had once felt in a dream, and he would not deny that it calmed him faintly. Exhaling gruffly, he shook his head to himself again slowly and picked up his pen from where he left it against his desk, disconcerted and disapproving of his own thoughts.

As he signed his name on the bottom of a document, some warrant for an arrest that he had barely skimmed, he found, much to his irritation, that his concentration's lifespan was as about as long as a drunk man's. Pulling out a spare piece of paper, Javert glanced up at his subordinate again and began to draw an inky outline of her face before filling in her closed eyes, haloed by her thick eyelashes. Her nose was made with a few swift lines, but he paid the most attention to the shape of her lips. _I should be working, _he thought to himself as he traced the delicate, symmetrical slopes of her mouth, remembering all too well what they felt like pressed against his in the dark. _I need to get this paperwork done, _his mind insisted again, but his hand still refused to still as he faintly produced the thin strands of her hair along her forehead and face. She had cut it again two nights ago, he had noticed, and, though he had said nothing, he noticed quite well that it still held a feminine charm to it, as if it simply looked too soft to be a man's.

Javert was making quite sure to include the small bend of her shoulders, forming the figure of her slumped form, when the door exploded inwards with a loud bang. Subsequently, Eponine jumped upwards and gave a small yelp as Javert ripped his hand away from hers, sending the papers on his desk flying into the air and onto the floor. Carefully capping his inkwell before any further damage was created, the Inspector glared up at the intruder before leaning back into his chair, his expression sullen and foreboding as he stared at the boy in the doorway. Rouvette, his usually white face flushed, stood aghast in the doorway, his chest rising and falling heavily as if he had just run a great length.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you so, Monsieur Inspector, but an especially violent man has just been arrested." The young man said, and then, when he saw the slew of papers strewn across the floor, stepped forward with heavy steps and crouched down to pick up the papers. His hands fumbled, trying to pick up the papers as quickly as possible, but then stilled when his eyes fell upon the hastily drawn picture of his fellow officer clutched in his fingers. He seemed to look at it deeply before glancing up at the Inspector, his entire body seeming to have completely stilled in a few seconds, and then handed the shuffled documents back to the older man in silence, the portrait laying atop the stack neatly. Without a word, Javert took it roughly and shoved the entire bundle of papers into the topmost drawer of his desk, away from prying eyes, and offered no explanation concerning drawing of his subordinate.

Eponine, who had stood as soon as she banished her initial confusion upon being awakened so abruptly, rubbed her sore temple sleepily and witnessed none of this. Instead, she looked at them both, arms folded across her chest as she marveled at the thick silence hanging between them, awkwardly.

"And what was this man's crime?" Javert asked eventually, also standing as he tried with all his might to repress the situation that had just occurred.

"Murder, Monsieur Inspector." Rouvette said, gravely. In a flash, Eponine could see a visible change manifest itself over her superior officer. Javert's posture seemed to stiffen, and his jade eyes darkened into a severe stare in an instance. She could see his face pale, ashened with a dark kind of anger she knew he only felt in cases like this, and she knew at once not to stay a word lest she provoke him further to do something rash. Rouvette seemed to be obstreperously ignorant of this, however, as he continued in a voice with a barely perceptible quiver,"He was caught in broad day light at the crime scene trying to get away from the corpse. The victim man was a bourgeois man of eight and forty years by the name of Pierr-"

"Yes, yes." The Inspector interrupted him, already walking towards the still open door of his office, his arms folding themselves meticulously behind his back. "I'll get the details later. Where is he now?"

"Solitary confinement in the east corridor. Room four." The young man said, his eyes glimmering obediently like a small hunting dog's. Turning, Javert gave a command for Eponine to stay in his office and begin a report and, for once intimidated by his behavior, she gave a small nod. Without a single word for her benefit, they both left her to her commands and the two men walked with long strides towards the east wing of the precinct where prisoners were held. "By the way, Monsieur Inspector, about your subordinate-"

"What about my subordinate?" Javert said, sharply, worriedly expecting him to bring up the half formed sketch he had made of the sleeping girl.

"You may recall me telling you that he once did not return by morning. Several months ago I believe."

The Inspector nodded, stiffly. That was the night he had discovered the truth about his subordinate's identity, the same night she had convinced him to sleep with her in return for his silence. Glancing over to his superior officer, Rouvette saw Javert's jaw clench, the young man's black eyes narrowing with acute curiosity as he took in this small detail.

"It seems he found the means to repeat the event. Several nights ago he did not return at all until noon. And when he finally did make a reappearance, he came back with that ugly bruise on his face." Rouvette paused, his steps slowing slightly as he waited for some sort of reaction from the Inspector. The older man gave him an annoyed glance and he took this as a signal to continue. "One more thing." He began. "His behavior's changed since then somehow."

"Changed?" Javert said, quietly, his interest cleverly concealed as they stepped in front of the door that led to the fourth solitary confinement room. "What do you mean?"

"Well, before he seemed. . . crestfallen. Like he was mourning a death or something of that sort." Rouvette murmured, his absence of volume ensuring that any other passing individuals would not over hear their conversation. "Now he's acting differently. As if he's intent on something."

The Inspector was silent for a few moments, sifting through this new information because he had not noticed any change himself. The thoughts of the apprehended murderer just a few feet away from him rendered this news unimportant at the moment, however, and Javert told the young man in a solid voice, "You needn't worry about Pont-Thenard not returning some nights. He and I have an understanding. He's doing some additional off duty work for me, and staying out some nights is one of the requirements." Rouvette gave a practiced nod, though a flash of curiosity ran through his eyes. "I can handle this on my own." The Inspector said to the young man. "You should return to my office and assist Pont-Thenard in the report. Make sure to include adequate details concerning the man's crime."

Unlocking the door, Javert stepped inside and found a youthful man with pale skin, his brown curls dampened with sweat and hanging in his dark, cruel looking eyes. He was, like all other criminals brought to the room, restrained with heavy shackles to the wall, and a large amount of blood covered a large majority of his person. On his trousers, Javert could easily perceive hand like smears over the front of his legs where he had no doubt tried to wipe the bourgeois man's blood from his guilty palms. None of this was uncommon to sights the Inspector had seen throughout his years as a servant of the law, but there was one thing noticeably off about the young dandy's demeanor. As he watched, there was an unmistakeable amount of calm about the murderer, so much so that he might have just been any other man plucked from the park or street.

"I have some information regarding a man by the name of Louis Pont-Thenard, Monsieur Inspector." The man said, serenely, leaning his head back against the stone wall behind him and whipping his dark hair out of his eyes. There was a small line of scarlet blood beneath one of the man's eyes, and it seemed to reflect off of his dark pupils to make them appear as equally as red as the blood soaked into his fashionable but threadbare clothing.

"And are you aware that you did not have to commit murder in order to receive an audience with me?" Javert said, roughly, sitting at the small table in the room and regarding the man with utter arrogance.

"Well, you see, Monsieur Inspector, I've never been a man to sit by idly when others spit on me." A betrayal of anger seeped into the end of the man's sentence, but a moment later he seemed to remember himself and his calmness was replaced within moments. "I killed that man. I'm not going to deny it. But if you're willing enough to listen, I think the information I have about your subordinate might interest you significantly."

"And what are you seeking in return for that information?" Javert asked, knowing quite well what the man was going to ask for. Silently, he wondered how and why the young criminal knew that Pont-Thenard was his subordinate, remembering what the girl had told him on that first night about her father and the Patron-Minette. He knew of the gang quite well, and he even remembered seeing this young man waltzing around the seedier parts of the city several times. Javert did not doubt for a moment the young man's involvement with the notorious band of criminals.

"Not much, Monsieur." The man said. "A few years off my sentence. Maybe a private cell."

Javert did not say anything for a long while. Resting his elbows over the table before him, he folded his fingers into one another. What could this man tell him that he did not already know? Surely he would only repeat the information about his subordinate's identity, the information he had already learned months ago. Something about the man's attitude condemned Javert to listen, however, and from his features he began to wonder if perhaps the man was closer to his subordinate than the other criminals of her father's gang. Sternly, the Inspector gave a nod of consent for the man to speak, leaning back in his chair as he did so.

"I regret to inform you, Monsieur Inspector, that your subordinate's nothing more than an unfaithful bitch." Javert tried his best to look intrigued by the man's words, and the look he forced into his jade eyes was apparently enough to satiate him into continuing. "You see, my friends and I, we all have this similar hatred for you, and we all had this lovely plan to kill you. So we got this girl, daughter of one of my friends, and we cut her hair and got her some trousers and got her accepted by the coppers to become a fellow copper." The young man looked past Javert fondly, his dark eyes peaceful as he appeared to be reviewing a mental image. "And the whole idea of it was so that she could get close enough to you to kill you, but we suppose now that she got too nervous to do it in the end."

"And you know for certain that this girl is Louis Pont-Thenard?" Javert asked, merely for the sake of abating suspicion from the young man. Slowly, he stood and crossed his arms over his chest, observing the blood soaked murderer thoughtfully.

"I would hope so." The man said, giving him a conceited grin to display two rows of sharp looking teeth, stained yellow by tobacco. "Fucked her more times than I can remember."

Javert felt, for a singular moment, his entire body still. His eyes did not blink as he stared at the man, nor did even a single muscle twitch and betray him, his heart seeming to be the only active portion of his body. And then he resumed motion, tilting his head back slowly as his arms fell from his chest to his sides, his fists clenching out of his control. So, he thought to himself quietly, this was the man who had deflowered his subordinate, the same one who had given that horrendous bruise to her. He had, as the girl might say, _crossed territories _with this criminal. Where he had been, this murderer had been as well. They had taken pleasure from the same body, touched the same flesh, wrapped the same woman in their arms, made her make the same sounds. He did not know what infuriated him further- that he had shared a woman with this murderer, or that his subordinate had willingly allowed such a detrimental man to touch her.

Either way, to Javert, the knowledge was abhorrent.

Hatred was definitely not a new sensation for him. Hatred was the thing he had felt most often throughout his past years of life, and it was no stranger to his world. He recognized what arose in him now as hatred, but it was not of the usual breed he reserved for criminals such as the man before him. That was in there, too, but another kind of loathing was making itself known in him, something that ran far deeper inside of him. He wanted, suddenly, to wrap his hands about the man's pale neck and squeeze until he felt his thin bones snap in his hands. Aggravated, he brought his hand to his head and ruffled his neatly groomed red hair, his green eyes glaring openly as he dispelled the urge within him to kill.

"You may be assured that I will look into this information." He told the criminal, folding his arms behind his back before narrowing his flinty eyes at the young man. "In the mean time, you will be held until further sentencing for the crimes which you have confessed to. If everything goes accordingly, you may expect a sentence of thirty years."

Turning, Javert placed his hand over the knob of the door, but was interrupted by a frantic exclamation from the criminal behind him. He turned again and stood in the open doorway, a flood of satisfaction seeping through his veins as he took in the alarm on the blood covered dandy.

"What about our deal!" The man shouted, struggling against his shackles in vain, fear having replaced his calm demeanor to consume his entire being. "We had a deal, you damn bastard!"

"We never had anything of the sort." The Inspector said, giving the man a well practiced sneer as he leaned against the door jamb comfortably. "I don't make deals with vermin."

Without another word, Javert slammed the door behind him, relishing in the screams of fear the man was still giving behind him. He found, not to his surprise, two guards waiting outside the door for him, ready for his command as to what to do with the murderer. As a particularly agonized scream came from behind the closed door, one of the guards tensed visibly before frowning, shifting from foot to foot as he did so.

"What should we do with him, Monsieur Inspector?" One of them asked.

"Take him to a more permanent cell to await trial. He has already confessed to his crimes." Javert said, stiffly. He was about to walk away, back to is office, when his eyes took on a more pensive look to them, their jade depths glittering cunningly. "And if he says anything strange, ignore it. I believe him to be insane. He told me some ridiculous story about my subordinate being a woman." He gave a small, cold laugh that made an icy chill run down both of the guards' spines, the frowning one giving an involuntary shudder. The Inspector took his first few steps down the cavernous corridor when he turned his head slightly to say, "And don't hesitate to rough him up if the need arises. The filth certainly deserves it."

He felt as he always did after acquitting a criminal, satisfied and pleased, but, when he reached his office door, he hesitated before going in. His hand slipped from the brass knob as he recalled that strange new animosity that had arisen in him regarding the criminal, and Javert rested his forehead on the oaken expanse of his door, his finger tips lightly brushing the surface as he thought to himself. What was it, he asked himself, that had probed this new kind of aversion? What was so different from this murderer in comparison to all of the rest he had dealt with?

The answer was simple: the girl. He felt protective of her, he acknowledged. That was not so unfamiliar, either, since he felt protective towards most innocents, but this girl was far from innocent. And, in addition to this protectiveness, he also felt possessive. He did not like to think of any other man touching her, not as long as their strange relationship continued. Perhaps, he mused to himself, this was what jealousy felt like, knowing that another, less worthy man had touched the girl he had trained and spent countless hours with in the past few months. Envy, Javert knew, was one emotion he would not be able to readily recognize. But this did not prevent it from causing him to give a gruff sigh before pushing open his office door. Inside, he found his subordinate alone, Rouvette having already supplied her with all the information she would need for the report, and together they finished it.

That night, after he took her back to his home for what felt like the millionth time, he wrapped his arms about her in bed after they had finished their normal activities, cradling her bruised face in his clothed chest, and did not give her the option to leave him. There was no affection between them, he knew, just as she had promised, no courtship, no courtesy. Only orders and her often times weary acquiesces. There was no love between them, and he knew quite well that there never would be, but for the time being she was his to canon.


	12. Chapter 12

**Wow, another late chapter, I am just so punctual. Sorry for the inconvenience.**

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"Your subordination will be completed in a little over a month." Javert told her one afternoon, a faint understanding of absentmindedness in his quiet voice as his eyes ran over the street they were watching together. "What are you planning on doing?"

"What can I do?" Eponine asked him, wiping the sweat the summer sun had produced off of the back of her neck with the sleeve of her uniform. Solemnly, her dark eyes looked up at him openly, boldly taking in the sternness of his mien and the faint agitation glowing in his jade eyes. Silently, she wondered what the cause of his agitation was, but quickly dispelled the thoughts. It seemed that, as more and more tension grew concerning the group of rebellious young men she knew as the Les Amis, all officers of the law, even herself, she would admit, had become increasingly ill at ease.

"If I give my approval," The Inspector began, folding his arms over his broad chest. "You would become an official officer of the law. You would be granted full wages and expected to secure living quarters of your own, and we would no longer work with one another." He said, quietly, his eyes still set straight ahead of him on the scene he was watching meticulously. "If I do not give my approval, you would be dismissed with a small pension for your willingness to assist the law."

"So," Eponine murmured, her sight flitting again to the side of her superior officer's face. "Does a woman have the honor of your approval to become an officer, or am I going to be kicked out?"

"I haven't decided yet." He grunted, crossing his broad arms over his chest as his boots shifted over the pavement. "But the latter is probably much more likely."

"I suppose that's fine, then, even if you haven't come to a full conclusion." She said, quietly, resting the back of her head against the brick wall behind her, her brown eyes narrowing as a soft sigh escaped her lips in the agonizing warmth of the day. The noise seemed like a soft, sad flutter against the Inspector's ear drums, a physical testimony of her ever present sorrow, and he tried his best to ignore it. "I never think too far ahead anyways." Eponine told him after a few moments, her voice rough and scratchy. "Worries me out too much. Might as well relax while I still can, I always say."

Javert took a sideways glance at her, wanting to be annoyed but finding it impossible. She was, he saw at once, too sickly for him to be angry with her at the moment. Her face was flushed a deep rose in the fathomless heat, and her thinness seemed to be more apparent than ever, the jacket of her uniform hanging off her narrow shoulders like a limp and tattered flag on a bending pole. He noticed, much to his distaste, that the patches of his subordinate's skin that were exempt from the pink shade were not the usual paleness it assumed, but instead the yellowish color of old parchment or milk beginning to grow sour. As he continued to watch her, she wiped the sweat off of her forehead with her sleeve, leaving a damp, vaguely crescent moon shaped mark on the navy linen, and then glanced back at him with cloudy eyes, giving evidence enough for him to know that she had been aware of his observation the entire time his eyes had been focused on her.

Sighing roughly out of exhaustion again, she shifted her aching feet over the hot pavement, ignored a dirty glare from a less than proactive looking citizen, and said in an almost imperceptible volume, "It's going to rain tonight."

He looked at her again, this time openly, his jade eyes looking sharp as he stared at her, unafraid. Eponine seemed to be unphased by this look, as she had received them often from him in the past few weeks, and she pushed calmly past him and into the open street, her hands at her belt and her elbows thrown out far behind her. She looked, he thought to himself, rather like a pompous man or a particularly arrogant peacock. Stepping out into the street as well, Javert trailed behind her, never more than a few dozen feet away, and continued his watch apart from his subordinate. The day proved to be mostly crimeless, however. This was no difference for him. He found, often, that crime during the summer escalated more often in the night, when the cool hours were upon the criminals who spent their days locked away in their shabby homes, hiding from the sun and the officers who seeked their heads.

Do to the lack of events, Javert found his eyes again drawn to his subordinate. He watched, still from a safe distance, as his subordinate stopped and spoke briefly with an artisan woman and her small child, crouching down with a soft smile so that her and the minute boy's eyes were level. In his sight, Eponine took her cap off of her head and placed it on the boy's head, earning an ecstatic smile from the child and an amused grin from the mother. The cap slid over the boy's eyes, comically too large, and Javert saw his subordinate give a small laugh before reclaiming the garment and ruffling the child's dark hair in her small hand. With a small nod to the mother and a last smile to the boy, she stepped away from the pair and continued her walk down the street, looking confident and sure and peaceful.

Anxiety constricting his chest faintly, Javert wondered how anyone could act so calmly when in just a short month their life would shift into an entirely different state. He was, he supposed, just so accustomed to the same routine life that anything else seemed utterly and profoundly worrisome. But perhaps, Javert thought to himself, she was simply used to a constantly changing life. Bitterly, he recalled his youth, a life of a similar style to that of that of the girl's, and wondered how he had ever been able to stand not knowing exactly what the next day might hold for him, little lone the next month. The idea made him quite uncomfortable, and he shook his head, both at his past and her future.

Eponine was quite aware that the Inspector was still watching her, but she no longer minded his constant gaze on her back. He had a right to keep an intent eye on her, she concluded to herself as she passed an aging woman settled over the street, clothed in little more than rags. Solemnly, she pulled out a few coins from the pocket of her uniform jacket and handed it to the woman, whose eyes glittered both with gratitude and surprise. She might be that woman soon, Eponine thought to herself before disbanding the thought quickly. As soon as any thoughts of the month to come found her, she quickly clung onto the one thing she knew would never change: her love for Marius. In a world where nothing remained the same for longer than a few minutes, this was the one unchanging factor in her life. She relied on it with all that she was, and the floods of affection that wound themselves in her chest comforted her more than she could ever say.

"Bless you, Monsieur." The beggar woman told her, and Eponine gave a small nod before saying something to the woman she could not quite recall. As she was walking away, she heard the woman call out to her again, her voice raspy and pained, as if hurt to speak. "Whatever bothers you, Monsieur, heed no worry to it. God makes quite sure to reward those who perform good acts."

In response, Eponine looked back at the woman and gave her the small, sad smile that seemed to have been claiming her face frequently as of late. Seeing Javert drawing closer to her, she stopped until he stood again beside her and the two walked together, this time in silence. His red hair clutched in her hands, she remembered, his pale, sweat dampened skin pressed against hers in the dark, his lips on her neck, his hands on her chest, their bodies clashing, meeting, twisting together in a tangled mess. Eponine felt her face burn, thankful for the summer heat to disguise her flush of shame as one of heat. God makes quite sure to reward those who perform good acts, she repeated to herself, swallowing painfully. Surely, then, she was going no where but the farthest circles of hell, lost in the rings of inferno she was destined for.

And then, as if the heavens were contradicting her thoughts, an angel suddenly appeared before her, presumably to banish her woeful thoughts. His hair was dark and curly, his eyes fresh and green, and it took Eponine's greatest will not to collapse as Marius approached both her and the Inspector, his face darkly serious and his clothes looking more worn than ever as he stepped before them. Without saying a word, he beckoned them into the shadows of a side street, his feet shifting nervously as the young man's eyes warily looked from her face to the Inspector's. Eponine, her eyes filled with the familiar spark of adoration that often overtook her, followed Marius' direction immediately. Javert was at first intent on not following the pair into the small street, but, as soon as he heard their voices, he gave up on his stubbornness and stepped into the street, standing closely beside his subordinate and looming with his imposing height over both her and the boy.

"Monsieurs," Marius said to them both, his eyes, which Eponine noticed at once looked somehow different, glancing about warily. "I am quite glad I was able to see you before. . . ." The young man began, addressing Eponine before trailing off. His lack of finish intrigued both Eponine and Javert, but neither of them said anything and allowed him to continue speaking. "Well, I am quite glad I was able to see you, my old friend."

"And why is that?" She asked him, her voice rough and pained, like the woman she had granted a coin. Her pain, however, came not from an illness but from an affliction of a different nature, one that registered itself sharply in her chest as she remembered the beauty hidden away in the reclusive garden, the one her beloved had begged her assistance to help find. She recalled the way he had treated her the last time they had met; distant, faintly cold, almost annoyed, and her words suddenly seemed to be quite angry to her.

"I fear. . . ." He whispered, glancing at Javert before his strange eyes seeped back into Eponine's soul, collecting at the spot on her face where the bruise Montparnasse had left her with was still readily present. "I fear that I will soon perish."

"Do not say such things to me!" She hissed at him at once, her hands finding their unconscious way to his arms where she gripped him tightly. "You are speaking madly! You must not-"

"Lamarque is dead." Marius said, loud enough to end her line of speech. "The one man who looked in favor of the people is gone. We have decided, now, that we cannot wait any longer. This is the sign we have all been waiting for, and I have nothing left to live for any longer." He told her, his voice soft and mournful, like a young father who had just lost a favorite son. "Cosette has gone. She has vanished, and I. . . and I don't know where." His voice cracked on the last word and, within seconds, he dissolved into tears, more like a young son who had lost a father now. Ignoring the Inspector's uncomfortable presence beside her, Eponine wrapped her arms about her friend's head, pressing his face into her shoulder, knowing that she was the cause of his misery. "Without her, I cannot allow myself to live, you must understand. She is my everything, but now I have nothing."

"Please, please do not speak this way," Eponine begged him, her voice resorting to its normal, higher tone in alarm. "One girl is not everything. You will find her. And if you do not, then. . . ." At her words, Marius pulled himself from her embrace, just enough so that he could look into her dark eyes and see the mixture of affection and panic swirling there like the dangerous tides of a river. "If we cannot find her," She began, her voice hoarse, her eyes beginning to unnerve him. "You need only open your eyes to see quite well that there are others who are willing to do anything for you. Who would die for you."

Her grip momentarily tightened on his sleeves, as if Eponine was afraid that he might, at any moment, slip away from her and join his rebel friends right then and there, and Marius tensed before looking away. He knew what she meant. He knew very well what that look in her eyes meant, and he knew very well what she meant when she said that there were others. His eyes focused blearily on the gray pavement beneath his feet, and when he next looked up a slew of tears was running down her face, greatly accentuating the bruise on her cheek. The Inspector was likewise watching her, his face blank and his posture rigid. His eyes, Marius thought to himself, were like a frozen over field. Their depth might have contained something lifelike and fertile if their glacial exterior did not suffocate it so.

"What happened to your face, Eponine?" Marius asked her, shaking his head to himself slowly. She did not answer him, and instead wiped her tear stained face with the sleeves of her uniform, and the young man's attention shifted again to the Inspector. "Did you do that?" He murmured, quietly, his eyes flashing with distrust and dislike. "Did you hit her?"

"I would not harm her." Javert said, firmly, his eyes darkening.

"No?" The young man said, bitterly, his eyebrows curving into a scowl which marred his pretty features. "Do not think, _Monsieur Inspector, _that I do not know what you do to her in return for your silence. What else would she not be willing to tell me but _that._" He spat, his nose twitching in an unpracticed sneer. "You act just like the government officials you so joyously obey. You think yourself so exempt and above everything and everyone else, even sin, but you, Monsieur, are going nowhere but the foulest pits of hell for what you do to her."

"Be careful, boy." Javert warned through gritted teeth, his eyes seeming to sharpen in their coldness. "You are treading on dangerous territory."

"As are you, Monsieur Inspector." Marius said, giving another disgusted sneer at the older man before tilting his face upwards. "I have more power over you than you expect. I could, at any moment, alert your superiors of your relationship with your subordinate, and you would be disbanded at once. And what can you do? Kill me?" He laughed, bitterly, and Eponine gave a frightened shiver, another wave of tears spilling from her eyes as she witnessed this new, cruel, bitter being that had replaced the old, kind hearted Marius. "Kill me immediately, or kill me two days from now. It makes no difference to me. I will relish in my end all the same."

"That is not what she would want." Eponine told him, her voice feeble and pained. "That is not what anyone wants."

"In that I am afraid you are mistaken, my friend. " Marius said, his voice softer now as he addressed her. "That is what I want. And that is what the king wants. And that is what he wants." He said, viciously turning to glare quite openly at the other man.

"Do not do this to me." She begged him, her voice catching again in anguish. The hair that fell over her forehead and around her face, both Javert and Marius noticed, had become wet from her tears. Marius, at this sight, felt a pang of sorrow and slight remorse, and Javert did not know exactly what he felt, only that it was not a particularly good feeling.

"I'm sorry, Eponine." He muttered, separating himself from her as he began to inch out of the small side street, much to her devastation. "My friends need me. If this is the only way we can change the country, then so be it. I apologize if my death brings you pain." He paused, his eyes falling to the ground again. "I hope that the change we bring will give you a better life. Better than this one, at least." He swallowed, and Eponine watched as a few spare tears fell from his eyes to the ground as he still refused to look at either of them. "I wish you the greatest of all happiness. And you, Monsieur Inspector," Marius paused, taking a deep breath. "I wish you the most painful, humiliating form of death capable in the world, and an eternity in hell."

The young man took another step backwards and glanced back into the open street behind him, making quite sure that it was empty. When he was positive that no passerby would be able to witness him, he reached out and pulled Eponine close to him, finding that she was trembling beneath his hands. Gently, he placed his lips over her bruised cheek, wiping away her tear dampened hair from her forehead fondly. Aware that her trembling had only increased, he leaned in close to her ear so that the Inspector would not be able to hear him and said in his softest voice, "Don't be sad, my friend. Sadness does not suit you well."

Without allowing her the chance to say anything in response, he slipped from her grasp, away from her woeful gaze and the Inspector's intruding sight, and disappeared back into the city.

She should have given him the letter, Eponine thought to herself. It was still stowed safely away in the jacket she wore when off duty, buried into the farthest corners of her mind. With that letter, he might not join his friends and perish for an act she knew would never come to fruition. He would live and thrive and be happy, but it would all be with Cosette and not her. Could she stand that, she wondered, could she stand sacrificing her happiness one more time for his sake? She stood in the narrow street, still trembling violently, completely oblivious to the fact that Javert was still watching her intently. Eponine decided that this time she would not allow herself to be torn apart so completely for him. Not again. It had happened too many times before, and she did not think she would be able to stand it one more time. But if he died, then she would die with him, and then maybe at last they could be together, united and bound forever in death. And then, Eponine told herself, then at long last she could be happy.

Unition in death, Eponine concluded, would be far better than separation in life, even if that was what he may prefer.

As lost in her thoughts as she was, she jumped when she felt a broad hand place itself over her arm, as if it meant to comfort her. "Are you alright?" Javert asked her, the volume of his voice set in an unchanging pianissimo.

"I'm fine." She told him, and she realized, with a smile, that it was the truth. Turning to face him, Eponine grinned and folded her arms over her chest, looking up at him with peevish eyes that spoke of knowing. As soon as he registered the mischievous look in her eyes, Javert knew very well that she was formulating some plan involving her young student, and he silently prayed that he did not play a role in it. "Our shift has ended, hasn't it?" She asked him, rocking back on the heels of her feet, relaxed. He nodded, observing her closely.

Noting her calm demeanor and seemingly troublesome behavior, he knew at once that he was not comfortable with her presently peaceful nature. She should be crying, Javert knew, broken down and racked with sobs for the man that he knew she loved greatly, the man who had just told her he was on a suicide mission, intent on his own death. He would far prefer that womanly, mopish behavior over the seemingly pleased person in front of him now. Her joy was far too disconcerting to him.

"We haven't noticed anything particularly strange, so we don't need to go back to the precinct just yet." Eponine said, stretching her jaw in a quick yawn before stepping onto the cobbled stones of the main street her friend had just left on. She turned her shoulders slightly so that she could look at him directly, and the grin in her face was not one of genuine warmth, but rather a fabricated display of enticement. "Why don't we go on back to your home?"

Javert was still for a long while, and then he finally nodded his consent and the next thing he knew he was settled at his desk and Eponine was in the process of splaying herself out over his bed. He took out, from the top drawer of his desk, all the notes and papers he had concerning prisoner 24601, but found he could not concentrate on them at the moment. True to her words, it was raining steadily, but he could still hear the faint sounds of her breathing behind him. The noises compelled him to carefully slide all of his notes and documents back into the desk drawer, but he would not join her just yet. Instead, he rested his arms against the surface of the desk, folding his fingers absentmindedly to stare out at the rain and darkness.

"Eponine," He said aloud, resting his chin on his folded hands, his eyes staring glassily out of the window. That was what the boy had called her, just a few hours ago. "Is that your name? Eponine?"

"It was. A long time ago." He heard her say from behind him. Her voice sounded mostly tired, but he did not miss the coldness there, either. "But not anymore. That person died the moment I cut my hair off."

Javert made a small noise to show that he understood, and silence settled over them again like a heavy, noise muffling blanket. The rain trickled over the glossy panes, slightly fogged by his warm breath, and he remarked to himself how odd it was that it was raining so heavily at this time of year. As if the heavens were subsequently mourning the death of General Lamarque and warning the citizens of Paris of the oncoming rebellion that would surely tear the streets apart. Or maybe, he thought to himself, they were only joining in the woe of the people all around him.

"The rebellion will not be long now," The Inspector said, quietly, still staring out at the rain before him. "Not with Lamarque dead."

He waited a few moments for a reply, and when he received none, Javert stood from his chair and found his subordinate beneath the coverlets of his bed, laying in a gentle doze on her stomach. With a soft exhale, his hand drifted to his forehead where he ruffled the red strands of his hair tiredly. Kicking off his boots, he took off the jacket of his uniform, laying it over the back of his chair, and stepped over to the bedside. When he laid down beside her, Eponine woke and, sleepily, her hands fell to the front of his trousers, her fingers winding around the fastenings to undo them, but he placed his hands over hers and pulled them to his chest, preventing her from doing so.

"Not tonight." He muttered in a hushed tone, watching as her lids slid back over her eyes, utterly exhausted. "Just sleep." He told her, and, just as she had promised many months ago, she obeyed him without the slightest resistance.


	13. Chapter 13

**This is it, folks. We're almost at the end. Just one more chapter left after this one. . . .**

* * *

When Javert woke in the morning, the rain had quit and Eponine had gone. As he sat up in bed, confirming his solitude with a quick look about the room, he stood, stretched his shoulders, and made a wordless assumption that his subordinate was probably already at the precinct doing some sort of work. The sky, he saw as he pulled on the jacket of his uniform and laced his boots back on, was cloudy and foreboding, a rarity in the usually unbearably warm summers. It would be a dreary day, the Inspector knew at once, and it seemed all the more unfascinating with his subordinate not there to entertain him with her strange stories and odd behavior.

Expecting her to already be in his office when he arrived at work, Javert was mildly intrigued to find the small, coldly lit room about as empty as his bedroom had been that morning. Standing in the doorway with his arms folded over his chest, the Inspector looked around carefully, watching for a sign that meant she had been there at least once since the day before. He stretched his sight, looking for a disturbed paper, a slight differentiation in the placement of the chairs before his desk, even the scattering of possible ashes around the hearth, but there was nothing to be seen. He depicted his office to be completely as it had been the day before and shut the door behind him before stepping back down the dimly lit hallway and towards the sleeping quarters where his subordinate was supposed to retire to each night.

Javert found, much to his disgruntlement, that she was not there, either. But what was he even doing, he suddenly snorted to himself, traipsing about like a boy looking for his lost dog? Shaking his head to himself in self irritation, Javert nearly stormed back down the corridor towards his own office, but paused when he reached the oaken door, an unsettling thought suddenly striking him down and fusing his feet to the floor where he stood.

He had become attached to her.

It was a thought Javert could no longer repress or ignore, but it frightened him all the same that he should feel even the faintest fondness towards anyone. He had, after all, never let himself become particularly close with anyone, not in all his years. When finally it had happened, the notion that it was a woman who had wormed her way into his mind was abhorrent. Women, he thought to himself, women were nothing more than frivolous distractions towards the continuation of his wok as an officer of the law. He had certainly never been distracted in such a way before, and he could not fathom what had triggered it to happen now. And her subordination would be over in a month, he thought to himself, faintly, and he would likely never find probably cause to see her again unless she reverted back to the criminal ways of her youth. But what could he possibly do about this, he scoffed, put her up in some apartment like she was his mistress? He imagined doing this, ensconcing the young woman in a little home just so he could keep her where he wanted and use her when he pleased, but the thought of her submitting to such a treatment was laughable. She would loathe him for confining her to such a life, if she did not loathe him enough already. And besides, Javert was too wise to let a woman toy with his life. Her subordination would be over in a month, and then he would no longer have to worry about her entwining herself in his life more than was needed.

The knowledge that she would soon be banished from his life was somewhat comforting, but as he threw back his shoulders and pushed open his office door, he could not help but recall the little Moleskin notebook he kept in the top drawer of his desk. The notebook filled with pictures of _her, _pictures of _Eponine_, he thought to himself. Eponine standing in the rain with that small smile of hers, Eponine sitting by the hearth in his office as she worked, Eponine leaning against a brick wall as she observed a street, and nearly a dozen pictures of Eponine in bed, asleep beside him.

He would have to burn it, Javert decided. Burn it and purge her sinful self from his life for forever, and then he could forget her and close this chapter of his life for good.

Inspector Javert was just situating himself in his office when a knock was heard at the door and the head of police ushered himself in, his solemn face matching the grave expression that always possessed Javert's own features.

"Inspector," The aging man began, his face as white as his hair and starkly serious. "We have just received word from an informant that the resistance is planning to begin their rebellion tomorrow, during General Lamarque's funeral. They are not a particularly large threat against the city, but they are still a threat all the same." The man paused, his forehead wrinkling as he took a deep breath, and Javert wondered if they had all perhaps underestimated the power and resources of the young men organizing the rebellion. In the past few months the prospect of a second 'revolution' had seemed laughable to all who would be battling it, but now it was at their doorstep and staring at them in the face. "We will need all men on duty tomorrow, including subordinates, and I was hoping that you would provide an extra amount of assistance concerning a particular area."

Javert stood, his shoulders thrown back into an overly respectful posture before the aging man, and his chest swelled with a deep breath as he felt his pride grow considerably. "It would be my greatest honor, Monsieur Prefet." He said, his jade eyes looking set and determined as he gave a curt nod. "What did you have in mind for me?"

"We need to infiltrate them." The superior said, his face still as grave as the morning sky. "You will disguise yourself as one of them, as a war veteran to be precise, and you will feed them false information concerning our forces." Javert gave a mechanical nod of comprehension, his eyes looking even more set and determined, however impossible the feat seemed to be, and the older man saw fit to continue. "That way, we will have the power of surprise on our side, and we will be able to subdue and terminate them all the more sooner."

Giving another stiff nod, Javert began to speak, his head still bobbing up and down dutifully as he said in a mannerly tone, "I assure you I will perform to my highest capabilities, Monsieur Prefet."

His superior gave another nod and made to quit the room, his hands folded behind his back thoughtfully, when he turned his head of white hair to Javert, his graveness even more severe. "I feel obligated to warn you, Javert," He said, quietly, so that no other passing officers would overhear his next words. "There is a significantly large chance you will walk away from this stifling an unharmed man, and perhaps an even larger chance that you will not walk away at all." He paused to allow one of his finest officers to absorb this information, giving him the chance to turn down the risky role if he deemed it to be too daring for him. But, as the older man should have known, the look in Inspector Javert's eyes only further sharpened into insistence and determination. "And that is why you are the only man I see fit for this particular job," The man said under his breath, more to himself than to Javert. "If death finds your way, then you will no doubt give it a small bow before respectfully following it to your grave."

"And then that would be my greatest honor, Monsieur Prefet." The Inspector said with a small, rare smile at the man's retreating form.

To die protecting his country, his city, even if out of uniform but still on duty, could there be a more noble death? Javert agreed quite well with his superior's words. If he was discovered by the blasted young men, intoxicated from both wine and political fervor, and his execution was decided by said young men, he would shake death boldly by the hand, knowing quite well that the faces of his executioners were ones that would soon be as dead as himself. And they, he mused to himself, would be going somewhere far, far different from where he would be going in the afterlife. And maybe, he thought to himself, just maybe he would be able to see that rat of a boy, that _Marius_, be removed from the world before his own possible death.

With these thoughts in mind, Javert gave another small smile before sitting back at his desk, pulling out a few spare papers, and writing a few sparse notes to prepare himself for tomorrow's wake.

* * *

"Tomorrow is the day, my friends." Enjolras said, his pensive eyes able to catch the sight of everyone assembled in the small backroom of the Cafe Musain besides Grantaire, who was quietly sleeping beneath the table near his feet, and Marius, who was, as he had often been as of late, serenely lost in his own thoughts. The young leader looked faintly disapprovingly at his distant companion before continuing his speech, hoping to catch the attention of his sullen comrade. His words, however, only served to further isolate Marius into his own separate world.

I will never see her again, he repeated to himself, for no doubt the dozenth if not hundredth time that day. She was gone now, he sincerely believed. Gone to some far away land with some other man, tucked away in some corner of the world where he would never be able to find her. The thought had more or less haunted him for the past week, but every time it ran through his head anew he felt another piece of him die. By now, Marius felt positively dead, and he saw no more point on clinging on to his pathetic excuse of a life. He was wretched enough as it was, the young man knew, viewed as nothing more than a disgrace to his family and forced into poverty, and at least this way his death might have a higher meaning in the world. Perhaps the end of his existence would mean more bread for the poor he often saw starving, more clothes for the children dressed in little more than rags, less pain for the people who were in an unending state of anguish, much similar to his own. Could there be a more honorable death?

He had been deteriorating in the last few days, Marius thought to himself numbly. It was as if the disappearance of his adoration, of his Cosette, had been his true death, and now he was simply rotting away into nothingness. The only thing he really felt now was the constant ache an tremor of his heart within his chest. He had drunken little, eaten nearly nothing, and done nothing apart from sleeping in a woeful and twisted state and planning his death amongst his friends. And then he had seen Eponine, a once friendly companion, and the event had left him more shaken than he knew. He thought of the way she had looked at him, pained and devastated, as if he had just told her that it would be her death commencing in a few days, and not his own. He remembered the bruise on her face, the Inspector's insistence that he had not been the one to produce it, and the affection in her sad brown eyes he knew was directed towards him. He remembered his accusations that she had allowed him to use her body in return for his silence, and he knew by both of their reactions that he has been quite right. It had all been too overwhelming. Seeing Eponine and telling her of his inevitable demise had felt like the final seal on his death certificate, and the signature that marked its authenticity would be none other than his own.

Still, as Cosette's round, beautiful, innocent face flashed through his mind again, Marius choked down the urge to cry.

It would not be fair, Eponine had told him desperately, for him to die and leave Cosette forever, but it had not been fair of her to abandon him, either. Perhaps he was being selfish, but there was no possible way he could continue to bear the mortal agony of being separated from the beautiful creature of his heart any longer. And besides, if she had so quickly departed from his life without even a single word, than she would soon forget him. She would find another man, Marius preached quietly, one who would be able to give her a better life, even if he would never be able to love her as much as he did. So, when death greeted him at the barricades from the rifle of a guard's man or the blast of an explosion, he would welcome it with open arms, thanking it gratefully for ending his suffering. And then, maybe if he was lucky and stood in God's favor, he would one day be able to see Cosette again. But not too soon, he quickly thought to himself, looking up as if directly addressing providence. Not after several long and well spent decades of happiness and joy, leading into a peaceful death with no remorse and no regrets. And then he could see her again, and then he could at last be happy again.

Taking a long swig from the cold wine bottle in his hand, Marius drummed his fingers against the cool, black glass, continuing his stare into an unseen point ahead of him. Buried in the tormentous images his mind would not quit producing for a moment, he to notice Eponine standing just a few feet away from him, still disguised cleverly as a young man, watching him intently with eyes as dark and unforgiving as the night.

* * *

Rouvette's shoulders ached within his uniform, and his head was throbbing steadily with an immense pain, caused by the various noises of the east corridor, the expanded wing where criminals were held before sentencing. As the young man stood guard, stepping through the slanted walkways between cells with what he hoped was an imposing air and solid mien, the various shouts and caterwauls of thieves and whores alike had begun to drown him in an irksome head ache that was leaving him in a particularly foul temper. This was his least favorite part of being a police officer, having to carefully watch over the collected criminals of Paris like a hen watching her chicks. The cutthroats with their scarred faces and idiotic speech and the prostitutes with their pathetically over exposed flesh, they all disgusted him. Seeing them all gathered here in one foul stupor only made him want to exterminate the lot of them, just as he would be ridding the world of the horrendously mistaken young men plotting to take over the city tomorrow.

He really should have been Javert's subordinate, Rouvette thought to himself with a quiet snort. The two shared their significant hatred of crime, and he had no doubt that they would have readily worked together as easily as dough and heat. He would have made a much better specimen for the praised man to mold into something more like himself. Better than that measly, overly emotional Pont-Thenard could ever have been, anyways.

Aggravated as he was, Rouvette found, much to his interest, that the one prisoner he most expected to be making a commotion was utterly silent. In fact, as he walked past the young murderer's cell, he found the youth leaning almost relaxed against the chilled bars of his cell, his legs splayed out over the damp floor comfortably.

The murderer, brushing his finely formed dark curls to the side with a flick of his head, smiled politely up at Rouvette and tipped his head to him, as if he was any other man greeting him on the street. The only movement betraying the handsome criminal's seemingly calm behavior was the constant twitch and movement of his long, pale fingers over the legs of his trousers and the cool of the ground beneath him. Even with this slight betrayal, though, something about his overly relaxed behavior was not right. He had been sentenced just hours ago, sentenced to a good forty five years in incarceration for his fiendish deeds, and Rouvette found it quite odd that he was not currently shouting his lungs out like the rest of the cut throats around him.

"Good evening, Monsieur." The young man said when Rouvette stilled in his tracks to observe him, the ugly tinge one only got from speaking argot frequently staining his silken voice. "And how are you this fine day in God's world?"

"Keep to yourself, Montparnasse. I don't have conversations with criminal filth." Rouvette hissed at him, giving him a practiced sneer before continuing his walk down the hall. He was stopped, however, when the murderer thrust his bony wrist through the iron bars caging him into hell, gripping the leg of his trousers in a tight hold. His instant reaction was to kick the man away from him, giving him a harsh crush to the hand beneath his boot as he did so, but the youth's words stopped him in his actions.

"You wouldn't happen to know a man by the name of Pont-Thenard, would you?" Montparnasse said in a hushed tone, his pink lips curving upwards slyly as his dark eyes flitted to Rouvette's face, which looked, much to his pleasure, significantly interested. "Ah, so I take it that you do." Grinning extravagantly now, the young murderer pushed himself up onto his feet, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned, face forward, against the cold bars separating him from his audience. "Well, now," He began in a whisper, his pink lips still grinning broadly. "It just so happens that I have some information regarding a man by the name of Louis Pont-Thenard. And if you're willing enough to listen, I think the information I have about your fellow subordinate might interest you significantly."


	14. Chapter 14

It was by utter chance that Jean Valjean learned of his daughter's romance with Marius Pontmercy. He had been, quite simply, leaving his abandoned home on the Rue Plumet after collecting some of the things Cosette had left behind in their hasty flee of the residence when he had discovered a poorly concealed letter held down beneath a stone on his daughter's bench beside the gate. He had retrieved the letter, taken note of the spindly writing on the back proclaiming his daughter's name, and then had hastily stowed the folds of parchment in his waistcoat pocket. It was not until he was again situated at home in his sleeping quarters in his small apartment on the Rue de l'Homme-Arme, no. 7 that he dared sit at his battered old desk and read the contents of the letter, knowing very well that no one would disturb him in here.

_Dearest Cosette,_

_You must know, or I must make it known to you, that my love lives on for you in the greatest of infinities, wherever you may be. It has been seven days now since we met and you made me certain of my affections for you, seven long and tortuous days since you have disappeared here from your home on the Rue Plumet. I will admit, I am quite pained that you would leave me here alone in this dreadfully somber city without the slightest of explanations, but there is no room in my woeful heart to be angry with you, my love. I wish you the greatest of all lives, and the greatest of all joys, and I do hope that you find it soon. I wish you these things because it is to my knowledge that I will soon no longer be a part of this Earth, for I am to die at the barricades of a rebellion soon to pass with my dearest companions in the hopes for a better future. I am sorry for leaving you in such a way, but a life bereaved of you is not one that I would choose to live, and, though I have looked for you in perhaps every crevice of this God forsaken city, I can find you no where. I fear you to be in some far away place, and I do pray that this letter one day finds you. You are, my greatest adoration, the sweetest of angels, the kindest of souls, and the most beautiful being who has surely ever walked this world. I ache for you, my love, but I hope you do not dwell on my demise for long. But please, if you may, remember that night, and remember the vows of eternal love that we drew for one another, and know that my love will exist for you even when I have long been in the ground. I will never forget, even when I am as old as the sky and earth, your voice as you returned those infallible words 'I love you'. I wish you, again, the most glorious life possible, the only life you deserve._

_Your love,_

_Marius Pontmercy_

In this letter, two lines in particular stood out to Jean Valjean, and those were the ones concerning the state of his daughter's affections. How had he, he wondered to himself, he who was always so wary, allowed his daughter to be swooned by such a man without his slightest knowledge? The fact was alarming, and, as he sat in his little study and reread the letter again, his face grew substantially pale, both with anger at this unseen man for stealing away Cosette from him and that he would soon die and leave her with nothing more than sorrow and the comfort one old man could bestow upon her. His first resolve, therefore, was to burn the letter so that her mystic blue eyes may never read her lover's last farewell, but, as Jean Valjean lit the fire and held the parchment out towards its greedy flames, he could not bring himself to cast away the tortured man's letter. So, instead, he concealed it beneath his mattress and vowed to forget that he had ever read it.

His plans, at first, worked quite well, and his mind relaxed into an eased state knowing that he had, for the meantime, preserved his and Cosette's shared life. But, as he slept that night, the parchment that lay beneath him seemed to envelope his mind in unrest, and he could not bring himself to sleep or even think peacefully. Its words came back to him, taunting him almost with their contents of love and happiness, and he lay awake all night fitfully. Hoping that a small walk in the fresh night air might soften his anxieties, Jean Valjean stood from his bed, his sight avoiding the place where he had concealed the young man's letter, and haphazardly placed a workman's jacket on over his night clothes. As he walked down the hallway towards the door of the small apartment, however, he became aware of a soft, sad sound drifting from Cosette's sleeping room.

She was crying.

For a long while he stood just outside of her door, at first unsure of what to do as he listened to the miserable, muffled sobs on the other side of the door. His strongest urge was to go forth and wipe away her tears and play innocent in the knowledge of her heart ache, but, as he placed his hand over the brass door knob, another sound called him away. It was the sound of a cannon, distant and powerful, but still audible in the downpour of summer rain. Jean Valjean knew now that there was only one possible thing he could do to spare his daughter from the torment she was currently experiencing, and for that, he returned to his room, donned his guardsman's uniform, and set out in the rainy streets of night time Paris, finding everything eerily empty and still as he did so.

He would go to the barricades, fetch Marius Pontmercy, and then bring his boyish self back home to Cosette and end her suffering. Her happiness, after all, was his only concern.

The hastily made blockades were not particularly hard to find, as Valjean need only follow the noises of cannon and grapeshot as well as the distant shouts of men and the pangs of their rifles. He waited for a long time, not wishing to offer himself as a volunteer to the rebels until fighting had stopped for some time, meanwhile fearing that perhaps the boy had already been killed in the obviously doomed rebellion. And, when at last the men in their blue ad red uniforms which were brothers to his, he inched himself close to the frantic young men huddled about in the rain, dragging their dead and wounded into one particular building.

Upon noticing his arrival, nearly a dozen fire arms were subsequently pointed at him as their voices raised in shouts and demands, and Jean Valjean raised his hands obediently before declaring in a stoic voice, "I have come as a volunteer!" To his relief, some of the pistols and other firearms dropped, warily, but, as some lingered their point toward him, a particular young man stepped forward.

His eyes, Valjean saw, were ablaze in a fiery passion that ignited their blue depths, though he could have been no older than two and twenty years. "You may stay and fight if you will, Monsieur," The man began, his voice hard and commanding, giving clear evidence that he was the leader of this particular barricade. "But beware that we have already exposed one spy, a man by the name of Javert who we are currently planning to execute for his crimes against the citizens of Paris."

The man tipped his head of soaked blond hair towards a post where the man he had feared most for nearly two decades was sitting with his hands bound tightly behind his back, an unreadable and blank expression upon his face. With his blatant red hair and glacial eyes, there was no mistaking that the man was Inspector Javert, but he seemed to not be paying much attention to his surroundings. Instead, Valjean found, those cruel sharp eyes he had often fretted about were focused on a young man sitting beside another not too far away, his short dark hair plastered to his forehead in the rain. When the young man glanced at him, acknowledging his presence, a look of utter rage and frustration overcame Javert suddenly, and Jean Valjean felt his heart sink even though he knew that rage was not directed at him.

"You will die here, you know!" The Inspector shouted at the young man, though the boy seemed to mostly ignore him. "You are throwing your life away!"

"Then I am doing the world a great service." Eponine muttered to herself as Javert made a similar remark towards her, careful enough so that Marius, who was sitting on the cobblestones beside her, would not overhear her last sentiments.

"You really should not be here, you know." The young man whispered to her, his green eyes still glassily unfocused on the distance in front of them both. "Tis is no place for a woman." Her only response was to give a small shrug, and they were silent again. As she watched, Marius' dampened curls appeared darker and fell over his eyes, and she was strikingly reminded of Montparnasse and his always inhuman gaze. The thought displeased her greatly, and Eponine forced herself to look away from him and instead at the boys of the Les Amis, careful to also avoid sparing a glance towards the Inspector. As she observed each different man, however, she was increasingly unsettled, finding that all of them either looked entirely miserable or entirely enraged.

It seemed that, through Eponine's troubled gaze, there was not a single person exempt from some sort of personal anguish. Even Enjolras, with his passionate blue eyes and disarrayed blond hair, appeared to be woeful as he contemplated the deserted street before him, his sight looking wistful and longing. But, as her eyes continued to lock onto the young man's form, he stood from where he knelt over the barricade, his lips parting slightly as he reached for his rifle.

"Enemy forces approaching!"

No sooner had he finished speaking when Eponine saw several neat rows of men quickly advancing forwards through the street, pausing and kneeling in the gloom of the night and rain. The weather and darkness obscured their forms so much, however, that, in her eyes, she saw only the huddled splotches of red and blue that made up the men's uniforms, and the vision seemed to become more and more muddled the longer she looked. There was an ominous silence, broken only by the sounds of the rain and the distant noises of warfare at the other barricades, and, noticing that Marius had stood and left her side, she followed his suit and stood close behind him in silence. Glancing again at the running mural of blue and red death before her, Eponine gave a shaky exhale and set her eyes straight forward, vowing to not rip her eyes away from Marius' sight until either one of them died. Through her peripheral vision, she could easily see the Inspector still tied to his post, his chin still raised proudly in the violent onslaught of rain, his jade eyes narrowed and calculating as she felt them bore into her.

And then, eerily, a commanding voice rang through the street, all the more unnerving because its producer could not be seen, and demanded in a commanding tone of voice, "Who goes there?"

A series of clicks were heard all around her, the battle chants of the leveled muskets, and she readied her own pistol, still refusing to tear her gaze away from Marius' form. Through the imposing darkness, she saw Enjolras ahead of them both tense faintly, his shoulders squared and rigid before declaring in a vibrant voice, "The French Revolution!"

"Fire!" Shouted the nearby Commander, and the guardsmen did just that. Within moments, Eponine's world became a hectic blur of gunfire and the screams of young men, and a fearful red flash coruscated over her eyes as the revolutionary flag was shot down. Hypnotized by the sight of the fallen flag, she watched with fading eyes as an elderly man retrieved it, replacing it to its post before being immediately shot down, his arms stretched out in a cross as his skeletal body fell over the pavement. For a terrible moment, the image of the old man cased her to lose sight of Marius, but when she regained sight of him her terror did not lessen anymore. He had gone to the aid of one of his companions, releasing him from the aim of one of the municipal guards by shooting him promptly in the breast, and now another was aiming at Marius' own self, no doubt in retaliation for his fallen comrade. A horrible moment where Eponine saw the guard ready his musket at her beloved passed, and all at once she had clambered over the section of the barricade Marius was poised over, separating both from the others fire.

And then she placed her hand over the nose of the man's musket and felt the agonizing sensation of the iron ball shooting first through her hand, and then lodging itself within her chest. Javert watched steadfastly as she fell from the barricade, his face ashen and disbelieving as he watched her torso slowly rise, one hand clamped to her chest as a scarlet rivulet flooded through her workman's shirt. There was some commotion going on with her boy, a keg of powder, and a torch, but he was not paying attention to any of it. Instead his eyes burned into her bleeding and ignored figure against the stained cobblestones, and he suddenly found himself straining desperately against his bonds.

"Somebody release me!" He shouted, his voice both imperious and frantic as he attempted to tear his wrists from the ropes that tied them, all his struggles in vain. "Release me at once, for Heaven's sake! I know that man!" Javert looked around him for a fleeting moment, but it seemed there was not a single man unoccupied enough to pay him any attention. "Have none of you any compassion!" He shouted even louder, his sharp voice cutting through the air and penetrating the ears of all near him. As no efforts were made to release him, the Inspector gave an unfamiliar growl of frustration, and then he felt a slight tugging at the base of his arms and felt the coolness of some metal blade press against the skin of his hands. Javert looked up and found, to his astonishment, Jean Valjean cutting away at his binds with a small knife, his face stony and grim as he did so. As soon as he felt himself become free once more, he sprang upwards, paying one more startled glance to his unsuspected liberator before stepping forwards and collapsing himself by the side of his dying subordinate. To his convenience, it seemed the young men of the barricade were still all too attentive towards the situation of the powder keg, and no attempts to re-restrain him were made.

"What have you done?" He demanded of her at once, his voice softer than she had ever heard it before, and, seeing her pitiful state, he lifted her bleeding body over the pavement and rested her head of dark hair in his lap. He could see clearly through the gloom a blackened hole through her hand, dripping a steady black stream, and another nearly identical hole in her chest. Every few moments, a pulse of blood oozed from the wound with the rhythmic beating of her heart, and Javert felt his stomach sink, knowing quite well that nothing would be able to be done for her. In response to his question, she gave a small grunt and opened her eyes a sliver, smirking faintly when she took note of the man above her. The one she would have least expected to come to her aid had been the first one to do so, she mused to herself darkly.

"Poor Inspector," She murmured, pressing her undamaged palm over the wound in her chest to stall slightly the blood pulsing from there grotesquely. Her efforts had no fruition, though, and she cold feel the thickness of her life escaping through the gaps between her fingers, steadily soaking into her clothing. "The only thing you would ever be happy to die for is the law, isn't it?" She paused and grinned widely, and he concluded that her immense pain must be making her either livid or delirious. But, just as quickly as it had appeared, her grin vanished and was replaced with a disgusted frown. "Haven't you ever loved anyone?" She asked him, her eyes closing for a long while as she continued to frown. "I wanted to die so badly, you know," She whispered to him, her voice catching enough to make an alien pang enter through his chest. "But now that I am, I really am quite terrified to do so."

"What can I do for you?" He said quietly, not entirely sure why he was asking her in the first place. "How may I ease your pain?" For a few moments, her eyes closed and she was silent, and he felt his hand at her shoulder. "Eponine?" Javert said, loud enough to rouse her,

"I like the way you say my name." She whispered, and then her brown eyes shot open with a start, and he had to force her down as she tried to sit up. "Marius." She said at once, her voice growing weaker and weaker by the minute as her eyes remained closed from the vision of his paled face and dampened red hair. "Get me Marius."

The Inspector did as she said, calling the boy's name until he turned from where he was gathered with his friends, the powder keg incident having somehow resulted in the retreat of the guardsmen. It was with no satisfaction that Javert saw the young man clearly falter a moment before falling beside them both, his lips parted and his eyes widened with alarm.

"Good God, Eponine," Marius exclaimed, his voice stricken as her eyes shot open to meet the comforting sight of his handsome face. "You were the one who blocked that bullet from me. Why on earth would you do such a thing?"

A long few moments passed where she seemed to struggle to gather her words, and a hard swallow eventually permitted her to speak again. "For you, Monsieur Marius, I would do anything." Eponine said with her small smile, her voice sounding unnaturally high and airy to both men's ears as she spoke. Her dark eyes took note of the tears welling in the green depths of her old friend's, and she struggled for a moment to bring her hand into the pocket of her threadbare coat, pulling a small, previously opened letter from the garment as she did so. It was, they all saw, stained with her blood. "I have a letter for you. From Cosette. I took it because I didn't want you to see her any longer. I thought then that maybe you would. . . ." A small laugh racked her body, transforming into a sob as she felt the Inspector's hands rest against either side of her face to keep her head steady. "But then look how well that turned out. Please take your letter."

His hands grasped over the parchment, but Marius merely buried it into his pocket before clutching her undamaged hand in his, caressing it softly in an attempt to soothe her obvious agony and fear.

"We'll all be dead soon, anyways, so why does it matter, even?" She whispered, more to herself than to anyone else as her eyes slipped shut again. She convulsed slightly, gritting her teeth as her legs tensed against the pavement, and she felt the Inspector's broad hands grip her shoulders gently until the convulsions ended. She could feel herself grow feebler with each pulse of her heart, and the metallic smell of her own blood seemed to overwhelm her disgustingly. "Promise me, Monsieur Marius, for my pains. . . ." Eponine murmured, her words quicker and more determined now that she knew her time had nearly come. And then she hesitated, uncertain of her next words.

"What?" Marius asked, gently, his eyebrows bent inwards as he took a shaky breath.

"Promise me!"

"I promise!" He declared at once, his voice loud and terribly pained as her eyes clenched. As he watched, she bit her bottom lip in pain, writhing slightly against the Inspector's body as another series of convulsions hit her, and when they ended after a horribly prolonged minute, she seemed more at peace.

"Promise that you'll kiss me on the forehead after I'm dead. I'll feel it. I must feel it." Eponine said, her hand gripping his for a second before going limp again. "And promise me not to be sad. Sadness doesn't suit you well." Her breathing stilled for a moment, and both men thought her at last gone, but then her adoring brown eyes blinked opened once more and the dialect of her words were already marked with the sweetness of another world. "And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in love with you."

The corners of her pale lips twitched upwards slightly, as if she meant to smile one last time, and then she died, leaving an infallible emptiness to settle over both men. Marius sat, reeling for a moment in disbelief, and then bent down to press his cold lips upon her livid forehead, true to his promise. Still staring at her inanimate figure, he stood and inched away from her body ever so slightly, his hand covering his mouth as a train of heavy and silent sobs fell over him, but Javert still sat against the pavement with her head cradled in his lap, his face starkly serious. The Joan of Arc pendant was still strung around her neck, and he could see it clearly, even in the dark of night, and he had no doubts that the saint had been with the girl in her last moments.

A small group had gathered around the scene, careful to keep their distance as the girl died, but now pressed forward, looking upon the young woman's face with pensive eyes, knowing quite well that the sight foreshadowed greatly their own inevitable and fast drawing deaths. In their eyes, Javert seemed to mutter something that sounded vaguely like a short prayer before looking up at them all, his eyes frigid as he stared at them all.

"Somebody give me a pistol." He said, loudly, his glacial gaze provoking a chill in each man's soul as he spoke. If he had been cruel and aloof to them before, he now seemed positively inhuman, his eyes giving no evidence of any sort of soul behind them. "Somebody give me a pistol." He repeated when they all made no movements, reluctant to arm their enemy even as he spoke in a louder volume, his fierce eyes still burning into all of them like the coldest ice. After a few moments of silence in which no one did anything, Jean Valjean took a lone and timid step forward before handing his old pursuer his own pistol, his face still as grim as it had been when he had cut him from his bonds.

Javert took the pistol without a word and rested it against the pavement by his side, his face still devoid of emotion. With ease, he lifted the dead girl from his person and set her body against the pavement neatly so that he knelt at her side, and then he picked up his pistol again. The men of the Les Amis watched in silence as Inspector Javert inhaled deeply, pausing for a moment to wipe a stray streak of blood from the dead girl's cheek. And then he raised the pistol to his head and fired a single shot through his temple, splattering those nearest him with his own blood as his body fell over the girl's, dead and gone from the world completely.

In as much shock as the other men, Jean Valjean looked closely at the picture before him. Through his wise eyes, he saw that the Inspector's head had fallen almost perfectly over the girl's chest, his cheek resting against her wounded chest almost as if the two were some star crossed lovers, and he wondered what on earth had motivated this drastic action in the life of a man who lived by such rigid morals. Peering closely, he saw, hastily tucked in the pocket of the man's waistcoat, what appeared to be a small note book of some sorts with a fine leather color. Though he did not wish to disturb the bodies, Jean Valjean found himself bending down and reaching out towards the small book, almost as if it called his name. When he had pulled the slim book from the dead man's person, his fingers peeled apart the rain sodden pages and found nearly two dozen sketches of the same girl laying dead on the ground. A small breath escaped him as he examined the multitude of drawings, no doubt done by the Inspector himself, and he silently noted to himself the apparent effort put into each stroke of the various pens and pencils put into each page, making sure not to exclude even the most minute of details.

Flipping through the pages, his wizened eyes traveled over the strange portfolio, and his fingers brushed over an image of the girl dressed as a police officer, looking proud as she leaned against a brick wall, her dark eyes looking out into the street dutifully. As he turned the next page, however, the old man found a new culmination of images- images of the girl fast asleep, her cropped hair mussed, the covers of a bed pulled over her obviously bare shoulders as she slept on her stomach. And there were more, all similar to the last, and, when he had had his fill of the bohemian sights, he closed the dampened book at the same time he closed his eyes. Cradling the small object in his hands, Valjean knew he had not been meant to see those artfully drawn sketches, and so he bent down again and replaced the notebook in the dead man's waist coat, blinking thoughtfully at the corpse as he did so.

Behind him, a young man with dark hair and a livid expression assessed the body of his former superior officer, and knew very well what was in the notebook that had perturbed the old man so. Clenching his fists, Rouvette backed away from the haunting scene, vowing to erase it from his memory for forever, and melted into the crowd of young men who he would soon betray and lead to their graves. And, though he tried to force his eyes away from them, he found his gaze being drawn back to the bodies of his fellow officers one last time, and, as he continued to back away, he found himself murmuring a small prayer in their names. Certainly, they of all people would need it, even if they were not the most deserving of individuals.

Jean Valjean wondered more then, wondered in miraculous awe at the fragments of evidence about him, but knew there were no conclusions to be drawn. The Inspector would have made it so. Distantly, the aged and weather beaten man turned and placed his hand over the shuddering shoulder of the young man the girl had called Monsieur Marius, the one she had claimed to love and no doubt the same one who had won his own daughter's affections, knowing quite well that whatever answers may have been given towards his many questions had been lost in death.


End file.
